Elections

PA lawmakers: "numbers don't add up". A group of Republican lawmakers say they’ve performed an extensive analysis of election day data and they’ve found “troubling” discrepancies.

According to State Rep. Frank Ryan (R-Lebanon), 17 lawmakers sponsored and participated in the analysis.

Ryan, who is a certified public accountant, says they discovered discrepancies between the numbers of total votes counted and total number of voters who voted in the 2020 General Election which is making them question how the results could have been certified by Gov. Tom Wolf and Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar.

According to Ryan, the analysis compared official county election results to the total number of voters who voted Nov. 3, as recorded by the Department of State.

Ryan says they found that 6,962,607 total ballots were reported as being cast, while DoS/SURE system records indicated that only 6,760,230 total voters actually voted.

Among the 6,962,607 total ballots cast, 6,931,060 total votes were counted in the presidential race, including all three candidates on the ballot and write-in candidates, according to Ryan.

He says the difference of 202,377 more votes cast than voters voting, together with the 31,547 over- and under-votes in the presidential race, adds up to a discrepancy of 170,830 votes, which is more than twice the reported statewide difference between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

Pennsylvania’s election results were certified Nov. 24 and Gov. Wolf issued a certificate of ascertainment of presidential electors stating that Biden received 80,555 more votes than Trump.

The group of lawmakers released the following joint statement:

“We were already concerned with the actions of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the Executive branch, and election officials in certain counties contravening and undermining the Pennsylvania Election Code by eliminating signature verification, postmarks, and due dates while allowing the proliferation of drop boxes with questionable security measures and the unauthorized curing of ballots, as well as the questionable treatment of poll watchers, all of which created wholesale opportunities for irregularities in the 2020 presidential election.”

“However, we are now seeing discrepancies on the retail level which raise even more troubling questions regarding irregularities in the election returns. These findings call into question the accuracy of the SURE system, consistency in the application of the Pennsylvania Election Code from county to county, and the competency of those charged with oversight of elections in our Commonwealth.

“These numbers just don’t add up, and the alleged certification of Pennsylvania’s presidential election results was absolutely premature, unconfirmed, and in error.”

State Rep. Frank Ryan (R-Lebanon) indicated that state legislators sponsoring and participating in the analysis were himself and Reps. Russ Diamond (R-Lebanon), Dave Zimmerman (R-Lancaster), Barb Gleim (R-Cumberland), Stephanie Borowicz (R-Centre/Clinton), Dan Moul (R-Adams), Paul Schemel (R-Franklin), Dawn Keefer (R-York/Cumberland), Eric Nelson (R-Westmoreland), Mike Jones (R-York), Rob Kauffman (R-Franklin), David Maloney (R-Berks), David Rowe (R-Snyder/Union), Kathy Rapp (R-Warren/Crawford/Forest), Daryl Metcalfe (R-Butler), Jim Cox (R-Berks/Lancaster) and Brett Miller (R-Lancaster).

The Pennsylvania Department of State released the following statement in response to the Republicans' claims:

"In today’s release Rep. Ryan and others rehash, with the same lack of evidence and the same absence of supporting documentation, repeatedly debunked conspiracy theories regarding the November 3 election. State and federal judges have sifted through hundreds of pages of unsubstantiated and false allegations and found no evidence of fraud or illegal voting.

"Now, the legislators have given us another perfect example of the dangers of uninformed, lay analysis combined with a basic lack of election administration knowledge.

"For instance, it is quite common to have significant "undervotes" for down-ballot races in a presidential election, particularly when there isn't a U.S. Senate race on the ballot. In 2000, Sen. Santorum received 200,000 more votes than President Bush, but the US Senate race still had more than 100,000 fewer votes than the presidential race.

"We are unclear as to what data the legislators used for this most recent “analysis.” But the only way to determine the number of voters who voted in November from the SURE system is through the vote histories. At this time, there are still a few counties that have not completed uploading their vote histories to the SURE system. These counties, which include Philadelphia, Allegheny, Butler and Cambria, would account for a significant number of voters. The numbers certified by the counties, not the uploading of voter histories into the SURE system, determines the ultimate certification of an election by the secretary.

"This obvious misinformation put forth by Rep. Ryan and others is the hallmark of so many of the claims made about this year’s presidential election. When exposed to even the simplest examination, courts at every level have found these and similar conspiratorial claims to be wholly without basis.

"To put it simply, this so-called analysis was based on incomplete data."

 

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