BRYAN CUTLER R-PA House Majority Leader

The Weekly Roundup Friday, December 4, 2020 The latest news from the State Capitol

Work Continues Over 2020 Election Concerns

To those of you who have voiced your frustrations with Pennsylvania’s election process, or those of you who have kept those feelings to yourself, I assure you, I not only share your frustrations but have personally been involved in trying to address these concerns for the past few months.

To begin, I am proud of the updates we made as a Legislature to Pennsylvania’s election law. As House Majority Leader, I was at the table in 2019 helping develop the most comprehensive election reform in the last 80 years.

The law we wrote enhanced security for every vote cast, increased access for all voters, guaranteed timely election results, and required every county to clean up voter records and ensure registered voter rolls were up to date – an action counties completed prior to the primary.

Unfortunately, our law was not the law used in the November election.

An activist Pennsylvania Supreme Court and a rogue Secretary of the Commonwealth moved the boundaries of our law, making our election less secure and ruining any hopes of timely results.

I did not take those actions lightly. I joined with other legislative leaders in immediately taking further court action to defend our laws before and after the election.

We advanced multiple pieces of legislation to fix the issues caused by the court and officially recognize what we believe are illegal actions.

We required a report to be produced about the primary election, so we could know exactly what the impact was of our new law for all voters.

We called out the partisan actions by the courts in press conferences and statewide media, and we engaged with national media ahead of the election, sounding the alarm for what we expected would happen in Pennsylvania as a result of the court’s actions.

We voted to require a complete risk-limiting audit of the general election, to know the extent of the impact of interventions by the Secretary of the Commonwealth and the court.

Sadly, our concerns before election day were proven correct. The public’s trust in our election process eroded as results were delayed and votes were counted days after the polls closed.

Today, court actions continue to play out regarding Pennsylvania’s election process. Allegations of fraud will be put in front of judges, and results, although certified by the Department of State, will fall under the watchful eye of judges.

Let me be clear: We will pursue every legal and constitutional path to ensure the integrity of the election. All campaigns have legal rights to pursue challenges, and those actions are playing out in court as we speak. As frustrating as it may be to you, by order of the Constitution our legislative session is over, so future legislative action will occur next session, after the electoral college vote is taken.

To address some of the most common concerns I have heard….

The Legislature does not certify election results; the Department of State and individual counties certify elections and we have notified our congressional delegation regarding some of the procedural failures.

We cannot call members to a special session during the month of December. The governor can only make that call now that our session is over.

We cannot unilaterally seat our own presidential electors. It is prohibited in the Pennsylvania Constitution (Article 7, Sec 13). The only way that changes is if the court would order us to seat electors, as some lawsuits that are currently pending would ask us to do.

We are the elected voice of Pennsylvania’s residents, and we will carry your voices into every decision we make.