Pennsylvania’s attorney general is moving to block a Republican subpoena that seeks to collect 2020 presidential election records, including the names, drivers’ license numbers and partial social security numbers of voters.
Attorney General Josh Shapiro called the subpoena by the GOP-led Pennsylvania Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee an attack on people’s rights and a partisan attempt to perpetuate the disproven claims that widespread voter fraud caused former President Donald Trump to lose the last election. It asks the Commonwealth Court to quash the subpoena, which was voted on along party lines.
“These Senators are using their position of power to demand voters’ personal information, all so that they may continue to lie about our elections,” Shapiro, who this week announced he will run for governor, said in a written statement. “It is time for public officials to move past the Big Lie and to start reminding the public that our elections are accurate, fair, and secure.”
Shapiro’s motion says there is a danger of personal information from more than 9 million voters falling into the hands of unknown third-party vendors, and it accuses Intergovernmental Operations Committee Chairman Sen. Cris Dush, R-Jefferson, of not adequately explaining the purpose of the subpoena.
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In an earlier committee hearing, Dush said Senate Republicans want the voter information due to allegations of fraud, “whether or not they are factual.”
Dush said he had heard of sworn affidavits of people visiting addresses “that were listed for a voter” and found only a condemned building but could give no other details. He added that the information sought in the subpoena will indeed be given to a third-party contractor so lawmakers can create legislation to prevent fraud in the future.
Shapiro’s motion also asserts that some of the information sought in the subpoena is already available “with much less fanfare” through the Pennsylvania Department of State’s website and that resorting to a subpoena “communicates an interest in something other than the requested information.”
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In 2020, Pennsylvania went to current President Joe Biden by more than 88,000 votes. Despite repeated voter fraud claims by his predecessor, Congress long ago certified Biden’s presidential election victory, hours after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in a deadly riot.
