(9/2022) I cannot believe it is September 2022 and I’m writing another article about the 2020 elections. It’s a bad penny that keeps turning up. Thankfully, Republican leadership at all levels is beginning to admit that there was no fraud in Pennsylvania and we can move on.

Still, I’d like to bring attention to some local elected officials and show where they stand on the "big lie." To improve our election process, we need to know where local elected officials stand on election integrity.

On August 22, State Rep. Seth Grove (R-York County), who chairs the House State Government committee, weighed in on one of the largest false allegations, that there were more ballots cast than voters in the general election. Apparently, someone compared the number of Pennsylvania general election ballots to the number of primary election voters. Obviously, the numbers would be off. Before the mistake was realized, the conspiracy theorists had their smoking gun. Once the error was factually corrected those who had started this particular claim, didn’t want to admit they were wrong. Instead, they kept on repeating it. This isn’t just a problem of candidates willfully lying to voters, it reflects a state of distrust in government. Add to that the 24-hour news cycle and it’s no wonder voters didn’t stop and question some of the "evidence." I understand that in the heat of the moment, this claim sounds disturbing, but in the days following it was clearly proven false.

Over the 2021-2022 session of the PA General Assembly our local State Representative Dan Moul co-sponsored 14 election related bills. Many were intended to take away the rights of voters. Three would take away voter rights, and one would be an affront to our Constitution.

House Bill 1511, would require a "unique scannable number on ballots for mail-in and absentee," would violate the guarantee of a secret ballot. Adding a unique number would greatly increase the chances that someone could determine who voted a specific way.

House Bill 195 would repeal the mail-in voting law, which Rep. Moul had just voted for two years prior. There may be legitimate reasons for these two bills, it has become clear that they were an overreaction to non-existent voter fraud.

The vote that should cause many of us to pause, was his vote supporting House Resolution 7. This resolution was introduced on January 11, 2021, only five days after the January 6 violent insurrection in DC.

The resolution declared that the Pennsylvania election of electors for the Presidential election should be voided and that the legislature should have the right to select electors. In other words, your vote didn’t count and we should just trust elected officials to determine the outcome of a Presidential election. The idea was that there was so much fraud that the election should be invalidated and redecided. Keep in mind Rep. Moul won his race that year, but clearly the fraud was only at the national level and his results were legit. What galls me the most is that 23 Republican representatives saw what happened on January 6 and five days later chose to introduce this resolution. The mob that attacked and killed law enforcement officers and defiled a sacred institution were fueled by 2020 election lies and those in our state house fanned those flames. While some of us wept, others continued to spread lies.

But wait. There’s more. Passing a resolution to invalidate the election wasn’t enough for Moul. He also joined with ten other lawmakers to sue the state to repeal Act 77. Act 77, passed in 2019, was a bipartisan election reform bill, Democratic legislators agreed to give up straight party voting in exchange for no-excuse mail-in ballots. When asked why he would sue to overturn a law that he just voted for, Moul stated, "So my bad. I should’ve checked the constitutionality of that bill."

Moul isn’t alone in believing there was widespread voter fraud. His close ally State Senator Doug Mastriano has another illegal idea to end voter fraud. If elected governor, his plan is to disenroll every voter in Pennsylvania and have everyone re-register to vote.

Mastriano, who was at the January 6 insurrection, is making plans that are clearly unconstitutional. Removing everyone from the election rolls is a violation of state and federal law and is a recipe for voter suppression. While I appreciate legislators finding ways to improve our voting system, this is a clear attempt to limit voters’ rights. We should be finding ways to increase voter turnout, not devising ways to limit voting.

What both Moul and Mastriano fail to appreciate, is that there are countless safeguards put into place to keep our elections secure. All they have to do is ask county election staff. Continuing to spread election lies is eroding the public’s faith in elections and is causing serious harm to our election system.

In 2020, Adams County election staff and others throughout the state received a massive amount of negativity and outright threats. This has resulted in a huge turnover in election directors across the state. Since the presidential election, 45 election directors have resigned and 8 more will retire, instead of working another presidential election. There are only 67 counties in Pennsylvania.

If every close election results in an erosion of faith in our election system, all levels of government will suffer. Our nation is built on the principle that we can be different and still work towards common goals. Our motto is literally, E Pluribus Unum, which is Latin for "Out of many, One." Let us pray that someday we live up to that motto.

If you would like to discuss this or any topic, don’t hesitate to call me at (717) 339-6514 or by email at martyqually@gmail.com.