Pennsylvania state senator Doug Mastriano, R-Greene, proposed a resolution Friday to recover the state legislature’s authority to select the state’s 20 Electoral College delegates, according to a press release.
Earlier in the day, Mastriano discussed the resolution with Steve Bannon on War Room, The Epoch Times reported.
“So, we’re gonna do a resolution between the House and Senate, hopefully today,” he said. “I’ve spent two hours online trying to coordinate this with my colleagues. And there’s a lot of good people working this here. Saying, that the resolution saying we’re going to take our power back. We’re gonna seat the electors.”
The resolution directs State Department Secretary Kathy Boockvar to annul the state’s vote certification.
Republicans hold significant majorities in both chambers of the legislature, with a 23-seat lead in the 203-member House and a seven-seat lead in the 50-member Senate.
He said the GOP-controlled legislature has to act because there is “so much evidence of shenanigans and fraud, we can’t stand aside and just watch this unfold around us.”
“If there’s extensive shenanigans out there it’s up to the General Assembly to step in,” he said. “So we have a fight on our hands and we’re gonna fight. We’re gonna take the fight all the way to the Supreme Court if we have to.”
Mastriano said half of the Republican conference in the House and Senate backs the resolution.
“Now obviously we’re gonna need the support of the leadership of the House and Senate, we’re getting there on that,” he said, adding that it will “obviously be a struggle.”
He expects opposition from Democrats.
“We’re gonna hear the palpitations and you know the outcries of our Governor Wolf and Secretary Boockvar, whose resignation should have happened months ago and she shouldn’t have ever been confirmed,” Mastriano said.
The announcement follows a hearing in Gettysburg with state legislators in which Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, lawyers for President Donald Trump’s campaign, brought forward eyewitness testimony from poll observers and authorities on data and statistics who allege election fraud and irregularities.
Giuliani and Ellis also laid out the Constitutional case that state legislators may reclaim the authority to appoint Electoral College electors, a power which a previous legislator had delegated to the Secretary of State and the Governor.
The Constitutional text in question is Article 2 § 1 clause 2: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.”
The Supreme Court has also affirmed that the state legislatures may, at any time, reclaim their delegated authority to appoint electors.
Mastriano said the state’s election officials disobeyed laws that require mail-in ballots to be received before polls close at 8 p.m. on election night.
He said they also illegally established satellite voting locations, failed to verify voter signatures, and did not properly count defective absentee and mail-in ballots.
“As state legislators, we take our responsibility to guard and guarantee our constituents’ right to free and fair elections,” Mastriano said. “I fought to defend this right for three decades…nothing is more sacred in our democracy.”
