More than a year after President Joe Biden carried Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes in the most highly scrutinized and repeatedly verified election in state history, state Senate Republicans plan to spend at least $270,000 of public money on a partisan rehash.

That money will go to Envoy Sage, a risk-management company from Dubuque, Iowa, with a thin résumé because the firm itself is just more than one year old. But the contract covers just six months and can be extended.

Senate proponents of this exercise call it a “forensic audit” of the 2020 election, but have not produced any evidence that it would meet the high standards that attend that definition. Ostensibly, it is an “investigation” of the 2020 election with an eye on recommending improvements to election law. But its main purpose is keeping alive the fiction that the 2020 election somehow was tainted, as a serving of red meat for the far-right conservative base heading into the 2022 midterm elections, which also will feature U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races, and state legislative races.

State Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward, Republican from Westmoreland County, recently signed the contract, which has not yet been released.

Her spokeswoman subsequently said that it would be released with “redactions,” which is unacceptable for a public contract, especially this one.

Pennsylvanians, who have withstood repeated challengers to their own integrity and that of their local election officials and other representatives for more than a year, deserve to know in detail every aspect of the hired gun’s investigation. That includes not just the cost, but the identity and qualifications of the people doing the work, the exact scope of the work, the methodology, and the means by which the contractor plans to maintain the security of individual voter data that might be included in the process.

The Republican leadership agreed to the contract even though the courts have not yet adjudicated challenges to subpoenas that a Senate Republican committee has issued to the administration.

It should not follow that up redacting any aspect of a contract about which voters deserve to know chapter and verse.

— Wilkes-Barre Citizens’ Voice (AP)