Category: Elections and Voting

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MEMO: PA House Bill 1800 Is Voter Suppression and Its Amendments Are Shameful

  By Elections and Voting, Memos, PA Budget and Policy Center

To: Members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly From: Marc Stier, Director, PA Budget and Policy Center Re: HB 1800 and proposed amendments  The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center opposes nearly all the provisions of HB 1800 and urges members of the House to vote against it. We evaluate the legislative proposals about elections with three criteria in mind: First, they should make voting easier and more accessible for the people of Pennsylvania. Second, while they should preserve the security of our elections, they should not include security features that are unnecessary or that make voting less accessible. And third, they should provide sufficient funds to the county governments that administer our elections. Sufficient funding for our elections would resolve most of the technical problems with elections in Pennsylvania today. By these standards, HB 1800 is not genuine election reform at all. We will consider the details of the bill below.… Continue reading

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HB 1800: A Partisan Attack on the Voters of PA

  By Elections and Voting, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts, Policy briefs

Today, the House State Government Committee, chaired by Representative Seth Grove, will hold a hearing on HB 1800, a bill that is a partisan attack on the right to vote in Pennsylvania. It is not actually designed to—nor will it become—law. It exists so that Representative Grove and other right-wing Republicans can continue to support Donald Trump’s Big Lie about fraud in the 2020 election while calling for changes in elections laws that would make voting more difficult. This hearing takes place at a time when Pennsylvania Republicans can’t seem to make up their minds about whether they want to engage in a bipartisan process to solve genuine problems with the administration of our elections or whether they want to placate Donald Trump and his supporters. Last week the Republican senator David Argall joined with Democratic senator Sharif Street to lead a Senate State Government Committee hearing on SB 878,… Continue reading

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We The People – PA Statement on Senate Bill 878

  By Elections and Voting, We The People–PA

We The People – PA is encouraged by the bipartisan Senate effort to find improvements in our electoral process. We welcome senators’ attention to real problems instead of reinforcing myths about the 2020 election. The bill has some good elements but some that concern us as well. So, we also welcome the opportunity that Senators Argall and Street have provided to suggest improvements in the bill. In considering each part of the bill, we suggest that senators keep in mind the following principles. First, the primary goal of any election reforms should be to make voting easier and more accessible for the people of Pennsylvania. Second, while the security of elections is critical to all of us, we must not adopt security features that are unnecessary or that make voting less accessible. Third, county officials can only make voting accessible and secure if they are well funded. Many of the… Continue reading

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

  By Democracy, Elections and Voting, We The People–PA

Harrisburg, PA — the following is a statement from Marc Stier, director of the PA Budget and Policy Center and chair of the We The People PA campaign. 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… Continue reading

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On the Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee Hearing on the 2020 Election

  By Democracy, Elections and Voting, PA Budget and Policy Center, Statements

Rather than address the needs of Pennsylvania workers, small business owners, and families still suffering from the effect of the pandemic, the Republican-led Pennsylvania Senate begins yet another round of hearings about the 2020 election today—an election that most Pennsylvanians believe was settled in January. It is important to put this hearing in its proper context. We offer six observations. First, Senator Dush, the chair of the committee, and Senator Corman, the Senate president pro-tempore, have repeatedly said that these hearings are a response to doubts about the probity of the 2020 election. They fail to add is that those doubts have been stirred up again and again by Republican leaders, starting with former President Trump and his disgraced lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, and continuing with Republican members of the U.S. House and Pennsylvania House and Senate who have repeated falsehoods that have been discredited by fact-checkers and by both state… Continue reading

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Senator Mastriano’s Proposed Election Inquisition

  By Elections and Voting, PA Budget and Policy Center, Statements

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… Continue reading

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STATEMENT: PBPC Supports Gov Wolf’s Veto of the HB 1300 Voting Bill

  By Elections and Voting, PA Budget and Policy Center, Statements

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 30, 2021 Contact: Kirstin Snow snow@pennbpc.org Statement by Marc Stier, Director, Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center Wholeheartedly Supports the Governor’s Veto of HB 1300         HB 1300 would make voting harder and more complicated. It would make the election process more confusing. It is a dishonest attempt to build on the mistrust of the 2020 election results that were sowed, in large part, by the very people who are putting this legislation forward. Many of the supporters of HB 1300 called on the United States Congress to overturn the decision of Pennsylvania voters in 2020, which was a blatant attack on our democracy. There is a useful proposal in HB 1300 that would allow county officials to do a minimal amount of ballot pre-processing. It would have been even better, however, if it gave voters a meaningful opportunity to cure… Continue reading

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Select Committee Proposed by PA House Republicans is a Danger to our Democracy

  By 2020, Elections and Voting, Statements

Originally published by KRC-PBPC here. The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center is a nonpartisan organization. We do not favor one party or another in partisan elections. But we do stand for elections in which everyone has an opportunity to vote and their votes are counted fairly. Thus, we can’t turn away from threats to fair elections even if they come from one political party, as they sadly do in Pennsylvania today. Just as President Trump has recently doubled down on his attempt to sow doubt and create chaos surrounding the upcoming election, Republicans in Harrisburg are proposing to create a select committee to “investigate, review, and make recommendations concerning the regulation and conduct of the 2020 general election.” This committee is a solution in search of a genuine problem. The preamble of the House resolution calls into question the good faith efforts of the administration, county officials, and the Pennsylvania… Continue reading

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Election Reform Enacted!

  By Elections and Voting, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts

Originally published at KRC-PBPC here. Yesterday, Governor Wolf signed Act 77, historic legislation that expands the opportunity to vote in Pennsylvania. The legislation includes the following provisions: No excuse mail-in voting: The law creates a new option to vote by mail without providing an excuse, which is currently required for voters using absentee ballots. Pennsylvania joins 31 other states and the District of Columbia in instituting mail-in voting. 50-day mail-in voting period: All voters can request and submit their mail-in or absentee ballot up to 50 days before the election, which is the longest vote-by-mail period in the country. The law also allows county election officials to establish an unlimited number of satellite offices where citizens can register, pick up a mail-in ballot, and deposit their ballot. Establishing satellite offices in communities that have historically low voting rates will do much to encourage more Pennsylvanians to vote. Permanent mail-in and absentee ballot… Continue reading