As the Arizona audit gasps and wheezes, the other proposed audits in the country are doing no better. Arguably, the one with the most life was Pennsylvania, because Republican state senator Doug Mastriano thought it was a great opportunity for him to rise in the ranks of Trump world and head towards the governor’s mansion. That it may be, but unfortunately Mastriano is getting a lot of blow back from his compatriots, notably state senator Dan Laughlin — who also has an eye on being governor. Reuters:
In an op-ed on Thursday, state Senator Dan Laughlin says that moves to investigate Donald Trump’s loss to President Joe Biden in the state are being made “absent credible evidence of fraud” and won’t change the outcome, as some voters hope.
“The current attempt to discredit the 2020 election results runs headlong into an unmistakable truth,” wrote Laughlin, a centre-right Republican from Erie County. “Donald Trump lost Pennsylvania because Donald Trump received fewer votes.”
His comments mark a rare public rebuke of Republican state Senator Doug Mastriano from within his own party. Mastriano has been arguing for a comprehensive “forensic” investigation involving the inspection of voting equipment, modeled on a contentious partisan probe ongoing in Maricopa County, Arizona.
Mastriano, who has promoted Trump’s baseless stolen-election claims, launched the investigation earlier this month with requests to Tioga, Philadelphia and York counties for access to their voting machines. Mastriano has said he would subpoena the counties if they did not comply by July 31. read more
Tioga and York have indicated they would not comply after the state’s top election official said she would decertify their voting equipment if they were handed over to a third party, triggering large costs for taxpayers. Philadelphia is also expected to reject Mastriano’s request after debating the issue at a commissioner’s meeting on Friday.
On Thursday, Tioga sent a letter to Mastriano saying it remained open to cooperating if he could arrange for funding to cover the $1 million it needed to buy new machines after the state’s expected decertification. The rural county of about 40,000 people said it must have new equipment in place by Aug. 20 to be ready for elections later this year.
So far a prior assurance that funding could be arranged had not materialized, said Chris Gabriel, the county’s solicitor.
In other words, the Pennsylvania audit is dying stillborn. Senator Laughlin noted that other Republicans did well in 2020. This is an echo coming out of Arizona, where Maricopa County Recorder Stephan Richer said the same thing. Richer won his race that year and he noted that Martha McSally said not one word about her election being stolen. The focus on stolen elections is strictly coming from Trump.
Just one more piece of handwriting on the wall that following the Big Lie is not a good move for the GOP. They can wake up now or maybe they need 2022 to wake them up.
Mastriano is likely going to have to answer questions about 1/6 – he was there.
What I don’t understand about Mastriano’s effort is the choice of counties. Trump WON both Tioga and York by pretty substantial margins (74.7% in Tioga, 61.5% in York) and he lost Philadelphia by a pretty substantial margin (Trump got just 17.9% in Philly). On the other hand, there are several counties in which the margin of difference is less than 5% and which all went for Biden: Biden won Northampton County 49.78% – 49.05%; Erie County 49.81% – 48.78%; Bucks County 51.66% – 47.29%; and Centre County 51.69% – 46.94% (and both Northampton and Erie had gone for Trump in 2016, though with less than 50% in both cases due to third party voting).
I mean, the whole deal with the Arizona dog-and-pony show is that Biden won Maricopa County by just over 2% (and 3 of every 5 votes cast in Arizona came from Maricopa County alone) but the choice of counties in Pennsylvania just seems beyond random since none of the three was remotely close enough to trigger any recounts. (It does, at least, keep the notion that the call for an audit is as blatantly partisan as the Arizona sham show but that just raises more questions. If you’re going to challenge results from such glaringly one-sided counties then obviously your only goal is to make people lose all faith in the electoral process. And if you’re a state legislator doing this, you need to be kicked out of office for malfeasance. Of course, if I were a potential challenger, I’d use his actions as proof that he’s unfit for office since he doesn’t believe he can be elected or re-elected in a fair election.)
I think your take is right on … the margins of, “Actual Votes”, in a real count were close in some cases, but a useful, accurate difference was clear and final … I just wish these people throwing so much time, and more specifically, huge amounts of cash on a pathetically weak-minded waste-of-time, would throw just a very small percentage my way … I’m sure I could do something useful to the lives of many more people, not JUST ONE DJT …!
what might be happening is this senator wants to say “see, these counties have big trump wins therefore fraud occurred in Philadelphia”. No, it doesn’t make a lick of sense but that has never stopped a republican before and quite frankly they’re getting stupider as the years go by. Logic, facts, proof-these things are meaningless to a certain segment of our population who want to send our republic to the scrap heap and install a “president for life” like they have in China, Russia,….To have an orange sh*t-gibbon who is extremely racist as that president is just whipped cream on top of a frosted cake…on top of a bacon cheese-berder.