Editorial: Senate committee's intrusive subpoenas betray bedrock values

The push in some corners to review the outcome of the 2020 general election in Pennsylvania took a strange turn in Harrisburg last week. There was a request for an avalanche of information on state voters.

First, the state Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee voted 7 to 4 to request emails, letters and any other written communication between the Department of State, which oversees elections in Pennsylvania, and the elections officials in each of the 67 counties. That’s relatively reasonable. It is the place most likely to show some kind of coordination or malfeasance, if it ever existed.

So is the request for all the state’s directions for how to run the election process in 2020. The training materials for poll workers and judges of elections? If there are questions about how the election was run, those are the places to look.

But the other information pursued is different. The committee wants personal information about every voter who cast a ballot in the presidential election.

The information they want is the kind of information people are cautioned not to hand out over the phone and to be careful about confirming on social media. In addition to names, the committee wants addresses, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.

An identity-theft operation is unlikely. But with the data in question, combined with the persistent push for a so-called forensic audit like the one conducted in Arizona, the greater fear should be the potential for harassment. This information would be turned over not to elected officials or state employees but to an as-yet undetermined private company.

Democrats say they will sue, giving the court the opportunity to stop both the subpoena and the audit overall.

Most citizens take pride in the act of voting. It comes from doing your duty, fulfilling your responsibility. But there is a reason that the sticker you are awarded after casting your ballot says “I voted” and not “I voted for (insert name here).”

The people are encouraged to do their part in the process. They are not obligated to say who won their votes. They are also not required to be bearded in their dens a year later as part of a quest that won’t die, despite it being disavowed by many GOP leaders. Most Pennsylvania counties have already audited the results. Even Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, R-Centre, has said there is no reason to “relitigate” what happened in November.

But Pennsylvania’s average everyday Republicans — the ones who cast the ballots, not the ones who hold office — should bear the greatest concern about what is being done in their name. For those Republicans, freedom and liberty are banners carried with pride. There is nothing of liberty in this subpoena.