There is no evidence to suggest any serious flaws in the 2020 election process—the results have been thoroughly scrutinized. Senator Douglas Mastriano’s ongoing efforts to suggest otherwise are like ghost stories, intended to make people uneasy or frightened.
The inquiry Senator Mastriano proposes would be enormously costly and a logistical nightmare to manage. He is asking Pennsylvania counties for so much material that it is hard to imagine how it would be transported to Harrisburg, where it would be stored, where the many staff members needed to review it would be found or paid for, or how the counties would run their next election this fall without the machines on which people vote and which count their votes.
This inquiry is being proposed by someone whose own involvement in undermining a free and fair election is clear. Investigations regarding the January 6th insurrection are ongoing and should include Senator Mastriano’s role in it. It appears that Senator Mastriano would very much like people talking about something other than his own lack of commitment to democracy.
If this proposal were put forward by anyone else, it would just be a bad joke. That it’s being proposed by Senator Mastriano, who has spent the last year showing his disrespect for democratic elections and the simple truth, makes it a frightening attack on our democracy.
It is time for Republicans, most of whom know better, to walk away from this nonsense and disavow it.