In the latest episode of the PoliticsPA Podcast, Senator Jake Corman, ranking Republican in the state Senate and now a candidate for governor, discusses the 2020 election audit his party is leading and makes clear it will not change the outcome of the race in Pennsylvania. Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by 80,000 votes.
“We’re not relitigating election results,” says Corman, who announced his candidacy for the state’s top office earlier this week. “We’re not looking to change results. We have no authority to do that.”
Continues Corman: “[The legislature] didn’t have the authority to replace electors, and we didn’t do that when a lot of people called on us to do it. We have no authority there, nor are we trying to…. All those sorts of discrepancies on who won, who lost are done in the courts. That’s where those determinations are made.” (Courts dismissed challenges to the 2020 results.)
Corman insists the point of the unprecedented and controversial audit is to focus on the security of elections overall. “What I am trying to accomplish is to make sure that everyone has faith in our process,” he says. President Biden’s victory has already been confirmed by multiple audits and was certified more than 11 months ago.
Corman blames any doubts about the outcome of the election in Pennsylvania not on former President Trump and others who falsely claim the race was stolen, but on some of the decisions made by former Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar in administering the election.
“A lot of the things the Secretary did were, in my opinion, partisan,” he says, specifically citing the use of drop boxes. “I lay a lot of…the conspiracies that are out there about the election at her feet because of the way she conducted the campaign.”
In the podcast, Corman also discusses his gubernatorial candidacy and a range of other topics, including conversations he’s had with Trump, stripping State Senator Doug Mastriano of his authority to lead the election audit, Pennsylvania’s economy, attorney general Josh Shapiro (who’s running unopposed in the Democratic primary) and the issue of abortion. Corman declines to say whether or not he’d support a Texas-style law prohibiting abortions after six weeks in Pennsylvania.
Corman announced his entry into the race on Monday. He joins 10 other candidates who’ve officially declared that they’re running in the Republican primary next spring.
The PoliticsPA Podcast is available on all major podcast platforms.
