July 7 – State Senator Doug Mastriano announced today that he’s calling for a forensic investigation into last year’s elections.
He traveled recently to Arizona to see how the state handled their election audit and he’s bringing the same thing to Pennsylvania.
Mastriano said, “The people of Pennsylvania have spoken. They want a forensic investigation into the previous election. I’m happy to announce that my committee in the Senate, the Intergovernmental Operations Committee, is beginning the process today, this morning, to work through forensic investigation of the results of the 2020 and the 2021 election. My desire is a forensic investigation. The language in my committee requires we use that language instead of an audit. It’s actually more accurate. The forensic investigation, it’s not recounting ballots because if there’s a bunch of bad ballots you’re counting, you get the same results. Garbage in, garbage out.”
The committee is looking for a scientific review of the ballots and for the investigation to take a hard look at the software and machines used to see if they’re compromised.
Nearly 200,000 people have contacted Mastriano’s office since last November saying they want an audit.
That number is backed up by polls, according to Mastriano, and that is a big problem.
Mastriano said, “For those out there who are going to start pulling out their hair, gnawing on their tongues and screaming and hollering, what have you got to hide? This is not partisan. We’re looking at both Democrat and Republican counties and all we want to do is see if the results are accurate. This is a great way to vindicate and say I told you so if the results are as they had been announced and if there’s been compromises and fraud and corruption, we’re going to address it and deal with it.”
The official call for the forensic audit will begin the committee process. It will give the selected counties about three weeks to determine if they would agree to the investigation or not.
If they agree, the counties will have to decide how the investigation will get access to the machines and to the ballots and make sure there is a legal chain of custody.
If the counties don’t agree with it, there has to be a voting session of the committee to empower Mastriano to issue subpoenas to the counties that are out of compliance with the request.
Mastriano said, “This is all underneath the Pennsylvania law, this is underneath the Senate rules. We do have oversight of the conduct and manner of the elections. I’m merely exercising my inherent powers as a committee chair in the Senate.”
In terms of funding, that’s still up in the air.
Mastriano said, “We have yet to make a decision within the Senate on how we’re going to pay for this. My preference is that Pennsylvania, which means the taxpayers covers only fixed costs and costs above and beyond the fixed costs…should go to 501s. I did have a private meeting with my colleagues in the Senate and low and behold details leaked out. According to the legal team that we have there’s no issues with us using 501 money.”
501 money is funding that would come from a private, non-profit organization to cover costs.
Mastriano said, “This is not influencing anything. It’s just seeing what happened and if something went wrong then what are we going to do to address if and if there’s nothing wrong everyone can rest at ease and put aside their fears and concerns. That anyone would be opposed to this on the left defies reason and logic. We constantly hear about the needs and demands for transparency and accountability in the government. We all need to get behind this. It’s not partisan. It’s going to be painted partisan by the media which sadly is blindly following the allegiance of one party and that’s a darn shame because they play an important role in our constitutional Republic in holding those in power accountable. It’s too bad they’re only holding one side accountable. We could sure use their help and investigative journalists out there to get to the bottom of some of this here.”
The entire process will be completely transparent.
“There will be cameras all over the place as we saw in Arizona,” Mastriano assured. “And my desire is that we have a process as good if not even slightly better and that’s going to be hard to beat because what I saw in Arizona was absolutely amazing. The bottom line is I work for the people of my district, the citizens of the 33rd Senate district. The overwhelming majority of my constituents want an audit or forensic investigation as we have to call it here. So that’s what I’m endeavoring to do. If you’re outside my district, let your Senator know. We’re going to need everyone’s support. I do have a good committee. I’m thankful for the members that I do have on the committee. We’re going to have to stand together. For the puritanical, it’s time to put down the knives and stop picking on your own side. Let’s rally. Let’s put aside our differences here for ten minutes and let’s get this done. It’s going to take time. It’s going to be a long process. This is a marathon. It’s time to stand together. As Franklin said, we’re in Franklin County, either we’ll hang together or we’ll hang separately. So let’s hang together in this endeavor to make sure that we have free, secure, open, fair elections where everyone has one legal voice per person and no one’s being disenfranchised.”
