The 2020 presidential election in Pennsylvania, the first in which any voter could request a mail-in ballot, had more than its share of controversies — some real, some imagined — and the process deserves to be tweaked and refined for future elections.
What’s not needed is yet one more politically motivated review of the election by lawmakers who are unhappy with the outcome. Fortunately, the commonwealth was spared such an exercise recently by a legislative service agency.
The state House, along party lines, passed a resolution Nov. 19 ordering a “risk-limiting” audit of the election by the bipartisan Legislative Budget and Finance Committee. The committee officers, two Republicans and two Democrats from the state House and Senate, rejected the call for an audit by a 2-1 vote — and that only happened because the second Republican happens to be retiring at the end of the month and did not participate in the vote.
Although Republicans continue to dominate legislative races throughout the state and have firm control of both chambers of the Legislature, they continue to rail against the results of the mail-in ballots that helped Joe Biden to a victory over President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania.
Republican leaders in the Legislature and Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf reached an agreement late last year, in exchange for voting changes such as eliminating the straight-party voting option which seemed to favor Democrats in past elections. In the June primary, about 1.4 million voters opted to vote by mail, and nearly 1 million of those were Democrats.
In November, about 2.7 million Pennsylvanians voted by mail, with Democrats choosing that option by a 3-to-1 margin over Republican voters. Because the mail-in ballots could not be processed and counted until Election Day, it took several days to confirm that Mr. Biden overcame an early lead by Mr. Trump to win the state’s 20 Electoral College votes.
In deciding against conducting an audit, the legislative committee officers cited several reasons, including doubts about being able to perform the audit within the 60- to 90-day deadline and an inability to find a consultant who could handle the task since it was outside their area of expertise.
The most logical reason for rejecting the task, however, was the fact that it would duplicate other election reviews already underway in the state. Both Democratic committee officers pointed out that reviews are being done by the Pennsylvania Department of State and the individual counties.
In fact, the state House Government Committee recently released an interim report detailing the election law changes over the past year and concerns raised. That report, along with the findings from the Department of State and individual county election officials, should provide more than enough information for discussions on future changes.
Future elections should be made to run smoother. But that’s not going to happen unless lawmakers are willing to compromise. And that kind of willingness has been in short supply in Harrisburg for a long time.
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
