We The People – PA Statement on Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee Actions

Pennsylvania Senate Republicans are unwilling to address the problems of working people while small businesses and families all over the Commonwealth are still suffering from the effects of a COVID-19 pandemic that has recently become more serious due to the Delta variant of the virus. They have no plans to spend the $7.5 billion of our tax dollars in state bank accounts to help citizens, yet they do have time to continue to spread Donald Trump’s lies and misstatements about the 2020 election under the guise of conducting an utterly unnecessary and duplicative “forensic audit” of it.

The latest example of this effort was a decision today, on a 7-4 party-line vote, to issue subpoenas to secure more information about which Pennsylvanians voted and how they voted in recent elections, even though the chair of the committee, Senator Dush, was unable to satisfactorily answer questions about how the information collected in this fishing expedition will be used, who will have access to it, and how the personal information—including driver’s licenses and social security numbers—of Pennsylvania voters will be protected.

The Senate committee decision would just be a colossal waste of time and money if it were not both a continuing effort to reinforce a false narrative about the 2020 election and if their proposed nefarious voter data mining was not a direct threat to the personal information of Pennsylvania voters.

We The People – PA, which is comprised of organizations that represent Black, brown, and white people from every corner of the commonwealth, urges Pennsylvanians to join together in denouncing this dangerous effort.