An out-of-state consulting firm will be receiving $270,000 over the next six months as part of a review of the 2020 election.
Envoy Sage of Dubuque, Iowa, is a crisis and risk management company that has been in business since August 2020. It will be working with Pennsylvania Senate Republicans on the forensic audit that has been a hot topic since the Keystone State tipped blue again after famously going red for Donald Trump in 2016.
The goal is to see what changes to state election law might be made, but it is not the large-scale, deep dive that happened in Maricopa County, Ariz. — as evidenced by the difference in price. The contractor in that case, Florida firm Cyber Ninjas, was paid $5.7 million.
The contract for the Pennsylvania investigation was signed by Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward, R- Hempfield. A spokesman for the Senate committee leading the investigation said a redacted copy of that contract will be made available.
Wait a minute. Why will it be redacted?
Redactions are a commonly used tool in court or government paperwork when some of the information needs to be obscured.
It might mean blacking out the names of underage rape victims or protecting the identity of witnesses. It might be to comply with a higher law, like HIPAA restrictions on releasing someone’s health information. It’s often used by federal agencies that deal with national security.
What could the sensitive information be here? What could be revealed in a contract between Pennsylvania state senators and a crisis and risk management firm? There should be no revelations of victim or witness names in a contract. There should be no references to health data. There should be no national secrets divulged.
A contract should specify what work is being done, who is doing it, who is paying the bills and how much that work is going to cost. Literally all of that information should be among what the Senate Republicans already have released.
Saying there will be redactions prompts curiosity about what is being held back, and in this instance, that is particularly strange.
The entire purpose of the committee’s investigation is to take a flashlight and look into the dusty corners of what happened in the 2020 election. The whole point is to uncover what may have been at best overlooked or at worst obscured.
How can the committee hope to do that while taking a black marker to its own contract regarding the consultant doing the work?
The committee already is undergoing challenges to its attempt to subpoena great swaths of information about 2020 voters. If this investigation is to be a successful endeavor that can be accepted at face value by people of both parties — or no party at all — then it must be completely conducted in daylight.
That means no shadows when it comes to the money. That means no questions when it comes to the motives.
And it absolutely should mean no redactions when it comes to the contract for who is doing the work.
— The Tribune-Review (TNS)
