Trending
Litigation regarding the 2020 presidential election in Lycoming County continues to go through the courts.
Two legal actions were taken by supporters of President Donald J. Trump, who defeated Joe Biden in the county in 2020 by a vote of 41,462 to 16,971. Trump lost to Biden in the nationwide election, a reality that the president continues to publicly refute, blaming the election loss on a number of factors including rigged ballots that were in Biden's favor.
As for the Lycoming County litigation related to the election, earlier this week, the state Supreme Court granted the appeal of a county Republican, Jeffrey Stroehmann, formerly the county Republican Committee chairman. The court, however, remanded the issue of whether digital images of votes cast in person are public to the Commonwealth Court.
That court was directed to decide the issue based on the Supreme Court's April decision that spreadsheets of raw data associated with every ballot are public records, according to a report in Pennlive.com.
The digital images issue was raised by Stroehmann who filed a right-to-know request to the county's Voter Services.
He cited a 2019 amendment to the Election Code that made public those images of mail-in and absentee ballots.
His right-to-know request was denied and the Office of Open Records affirmed that decision, as did Lycoming County President Judge Eric R. Linhardt.
Linhard in his opinion explained how he ruled that CVRs were public but images were not:
A CVR contains almost all the information that is on a ballot but does not list the name of a write-in.
An image will not only reveal whom the voter wrote in but also display the voter's handwriting.
Someone familiar with the handwriting could identify the voter.
The Commonwealth Court also affirmed Linhardt, finding, as he did, that digital images of in-person ballots qualify under the statute as contents of ballot boxes and are not public records under the state Right-to-Know Law, PennLive.com reported..
Stroehmann then appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that digital copies do not constitute contents of ballot boxes as do the physical ballots and should be public.
The matter is now back before the Commonwealth Court, which is to consider the Supreme Court's April decision that made cast-vote records (CVR) public.
These records are created when voters' choices are recorded electronically or when paper ballots are scanned. Lycoming County uses paper ballots, which are scanned.
The county's voter services office maintained during the litigation that scanners and tabulators constitute voting machines, and cast-vote records are contents of ballot boxes.
Also involved, Heather Honey, who heads Lebanon-based Haystack Investigations, who made the request for digital copies of CVRs from the 2020 presidential election.
The county denied her request, but Linhardt ruled they were subject to the Right-To-Know law.
The Pennsylvania Department of State, as an intervenor for the county Office of Voter Services, appealed to the Commonwealth Court, which reversed Linhardt.
Honey was denied permission to see CVRs because she is not a county resident.
State Rep. Joe Hamm, R-Hepburn Township, then county GOP chair Donald Peters, and Stroehmann were given that right.
Forrest Lehman, county elections director, said that all requested information has been provided in accordance with the decision of the courts.