by Bradley Vasoli at The Star News Network
A lawsuit alleging multiple violations of federal and state election laws, as well as Pennsylvania’s “Right to Know” statute, was filed in Delaware County Court of Pennsylvania Wednesday night, according to sources familiar with the litigation.
The suit (case number: 187701637235922978) was brought by plaintiffs Gregory Stenstrom, Leah Hoopes and Ruth Morin. Stenstrom, a 2020 Republican poll watcher, has been outspoken in recent months regarding alleged irregularities in ballot canvassing in Delaware County. Defendants include election officials Marilyn Heider and James Ziegelhoffer as well as Delaware County, the Delaware County Board of Elections and the Delaware County Bureau of Elections.
In early 2021, a whistleblower working for the Delaware County Bureau of Elections began inquiring why it was apparent to her that multiple documents pertaining to the Nov. 3, 2020 elections were being destroyed in the southeastern Pennsylvania county, the sources said. The name of the whistleblower has not yet been made public.
In May, a third-party attorney filed a request via Pennsylvania’s public-transparency law, asking for election data and records for last November’s elections. In particular, the request asked for return sheets, the official documents on which election results are recorded, as well as voting-machine tapes showing the in-person vote totals for each precinct.
According to the videos and the sources regarding the lawsuit, many such records were actually destroyed because Delaware County officials violated numerous election laws and needed to hide evidence of their violations. The alleged destruction of records was, the sources say, done to ensure that the records eventually provided actually matched the election results that were reported in Nov. 2020.
Pennsylvania law requires that voting records be preserved for 11 months after an election and federal law demands that such records be preserved for 22 months after an election. Pennsylvania law also requires that voting records be preserved for 11 months after an election and federal law demands that such records be preserved for 22 months after an election. Records in Delaware County were also required to be preserved per a prior lawsuit in which Stenstrom alleged election irregularities.
One video provided by the more recent lawsuit’s sources shows Tom Gallagher, a lawyer and election official in Delaware County, destroying elongated pieces of paper – allegedly the voting-machine tapes election officials are required to preserve. In that recording, the whistleblower asks Gallagher off-camera why he is tearing up the documents. Gallagher replies, “At this point, I don’t want anybody to pick it up and think that we threw stuff away.”…
(T-Room here – lawsuit is in separate link immediately below this post)
Continue Reading