Two GOP county commissioners and their attorney, who gave outside parties unauthorized access to voting machines, owe the Pennsylvania secretary of state nearly $1 million, CNN reported on Monday, September 2, 2024 (read story here).
The attorney and outside parties were connected to Sidney Powell, a 2020 Trump campaign lawyer at the forefront of his election denial efforts. The attorney also was a fake elector. Biden narrowly won Pennsylvania, a key swing state.
The intrusion rendered the voting machines unusable in future elections, but the county will foot the bill for replacing them. The financial penalty isn’t a fine for that, it was imposed by the state supreme court to reimburse the secretary of state’s legal expenses in the episode. See more details here. The court delegated calculation of the amount to a special master.
Elections, including for president, are carried out by the states. Every step of the election process, including challenging votes or results, is spelled out by law. The process is designed to finalize a result in a timely manner, so the office is filled on schedule. Votes and results must be disputed within this process, and no recount, inspection, or challenge conducted outside the statutory process is legally valid.
Thus, these rogue inspections of voting machines could affect not affect the result in Pennsylvania, which Biden officially won by 80,555 votes, or 1.17%. Note this margin is outside the threshold for a recount, and well beyond reach of changing the result, as recounts typically change only a few dozen votes. The whole exercise, including the legal actions, was pointless.
And that’s the point, or rather one of two points to be made about this. The first point is that the election deniers’ actions cost taxpayers $1 million. This penalty shifts that financial burden to them, where it belongs.
The second point is that bad-faith actions of election deniers in many cases have cost them personally. Some Capitol rioters went to jail; some fake electors face criminal prosecution; Trump lawyers who pursued frivolous legal actions have faced sanctions ranging from fines to disbarment.
This is as it should be. Trying to overthrow an election should not be cost-free, in part to deter similar conduct in the future. Trump himself, the perpetrator at the center of all this, so far has escaped consequences (although that may not continue to be the case), but many of those who aided and abetted him have paid a price.
Let that send a message, and be fair warning, to everyone that our elections are not to be toyed with.