Pennsylvania Senate President Pro Tempore and gubernatorial candidate Jake Corman (R-Bellefonte) appeared on Bannon’s WarRoom with host Stephen K. Bannon Thursday to discuss his proposed reforms to make elections more secure in his state.
Corman promised to call for a special legislative session on election-related legislation the day he takes office. Items he said he intends to address foremost are requiring identification of all voters, rescinding a state policy allowing people to vote by mail without submitting an excuse, banning absentee-ballot drop boxes and banning the use of private grants for election administration.
“There has been no issue in my career that I’ve gotten more voter contact on,” Corman said. “I’m reacting to my constituents. I’m reacting to the people of Pennsylvania who are frustrated by the way this election was handled by Secretary [of State] Kathy Boockvar [D] and Governor [Tom] Wolf.”
No-excuse mail-in voting, drop boxes and third-party election grants all emerged as issues during the 2020 presidential election. That was the first year that the commonwealth, per Act 77, began allowing voters to apply for absentee ballots without needing an excuse such as illness or travel. Although the act did not authorize the use of drop boxes, then-Secretary of State Boockvar issued guidance to counties asserting that such ballot receptacles could be utilized.
2020 was also the year that left-wing nonprofits began disbursing funds for election administration across America, largely in majority-Democrat counties that would inevitably turn out more heavily for Joe Biden than Donald Trump.
The largest giver among such groups was the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), a Chicago-based nonprofit to which Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan contributed $350 million in 2020. Of the approximately $22 million this organization granted to Pennsylvania’s county election offices, $19 million went to Democratic-leaning counties and $1.4 million of it went to Republican-leaning ones. An analysis by the Philadelphia-based opinion journal Broad & Liberty demonstrated that the grants were also lopsided in favor of majority-Democrat areas on a per-voter basis.
Other elements of Corman’s election-integrity plan include requiring all litigation pertaining to an election to be resolved before the contest’s results are certified, shifting election certification responsibility from the Pennsylvania Department of State to the State Senate and requiring the Secretary of State to perform an audit of every election going forward.
Pennsylvania holds its 2022 primary on May 17. Corman will compete with federal prosecutor Bill McSwain, State Senator Doug Mastriano (R-Gettysburg), former Delaware County Councilman Dave White, media strategist Charlie Gerow, former congressman and former Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta, former Congresswoman Melissa Hart, surgeon Nche Zama and Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Gale for the GOP nomination. The Republican nominee will face Josh Shapiro, who is Pennsylvania’s attorney general as well as a former state representative and Montgomery County commissioner.
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Bradley Vasoli is managing editor of The Pennsylvania Daily Star. Follow Brad on Twitter at @BVasoli. Email tips to [email protected].
Background Photo “Pennsylvania Capitol” by Kumar Appaiah. CC BY-SA 2.0.
