The certified 2020 election results in Pennsylvania show Joe Biden won with 80,555 more votes than Donald Trump. But when then-Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar certified the vote on Nov. 24, 2020, the state had 784,752 more ballots than voters; nearly ten times more than Biden’s margin of victory.
There are legitimate reasons for over-votes; for example, a voter may make a mistake and ask for a new ballot. But Pennsylvania law specifically says when the ballots exceed the total number of persons who voted, “such excess shall be deemed a discrepancy and palpable error, and shall be investigated by the return board, and no votes shall be recorded from such district until such investigation shall be had.”
Put simply, over-votes can’t be counted until they are investigated.
But they weren’t investigated before the election was certified. The Pennsylvania Department of State did not respond to questions for this story.
It is worth noting that governments don’t keep records forever. They have retention schedules that guide when to destroy documents to make room for new ones.
In Pennsylvania, as of September 2022, counties can legally destroy the paper ballots and documentation related to the 2020 election, ending any chance of explaining election irregularities that have troubled so many voters, and spurred many to rally at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Grassroots Research
Soon after the 2020 election, three Pennsylvania moms, Toni Shuppe, Karen Taylor, and Jamie Sheffield, launched an online petition calling for a full forensic audit of Pennsylvania’s election results. In four months, the petition had over 100,000 signers. That was the beginning of their organization, Audit the Vote PA. But because of the looming retention schedule, they doubt their questions will be answered.
Last week they launched a new petition, calling for the results of the 2020 election to be decertified.
“We can’t ignore it because the laws were broken certifying the election, which now shows that the anomalies, irregularities, and potential fraud, far outweighs the margin of victory,” Audit the Vote PA CEO Toni Shuppe told The Epoch Times. “How do we move forward knowing that our votes are going to count, without investigating, analyzing and decertifying something that we know was not legitimate?”
Audit the Vote PA has spent months going door to door, interviewing voters. In this process, and by pouring over data provided by counties and the Pennsylvania Department of State, they found a number of discrepancies.
By Beth Brelje
