close

OP-ED: Reschenthaler should resign from Congress

5 min read
article image -

The events of Jan. 6 in Washington, D.C., were reprehensible and repugnant. But these repulsive deeds began hours before rioters stormed our U.S. Capitol building. The United States Senate and House of Representatives met earlier to begin certifying the results of the Electoral College and confirm Joe Biden as president. However, several members of Congress took this time to object to the results, claiming fraud with absolutely no proof. One of those was our Washington County representative in Congress, Guy Reschenthaler, who voted to object to the electoral votes for both states that were brought to vote, Arizona and Pennsylvania.

In recent history, objecting to the results of the Electoral College for contentious states (such as Florida in the 2000 election) has been relatively common for members of the House. However, without a senator to sign on to the objection, these qualms are quickly overruled. This year was different. Several senators continued to push the unsubstantiated claim that the presidential election was fraudulent, ignoring the fact that the Trump campaign pressed forth with over 60 lawsuits around the country that were shot down with no proof that any illegal activities occurred.

Reschenthaler has been one of Donald Trump’s biggest bootlickers, appearing in interviews and on social media regurgitating these lies. He claims that here in Pennsylvania, and specifically in the 14th Congressional District that he represents, mail-in ballots that were already filled in were sent to individuals. This would seem to be a relatively easy claim to prove, yet this evidence was not given to the courts to aid in the lawsuits brought by the Trump campaign. It is obvious that Reschenthaler is lying in an attempt to curry favor with Donald Trump and his followers.

But what would cause a congressman to spout these falsehoods? The answer is a term called “apophenia.” This is the tendency to connect things together that are actually unrelated. Reschenthaler heard stories of voters receiving filled in “ballots” and, instead of investigating, accepted the claims at face value because he was being led to believe that Democrats were cheating and he wanted to believe that. Due to the pandemic and ease of use, mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania had become popular. Multiple voting groups from within the state and elsewhere were mailing applications to individuals to encourage them to apply to vote by mail. Some even went so far as to fill out the individual’s information, such as name and address, on the form so that the voter only had to sign the application and mail it back. This caused many to complain that their “ballot” was already filled in, which was obviously not the case, as these were only applications for a ballot. Reschenthaler ignored alternatives that could explain confusion with the new vote-by-mail procedures, and instead continued to make unsubstantiated claims of fraud.

In 2019 the Republican-led Pennsylvania Legislature passed Act 77, expanding mail-in ballots to any resident of the state. This law also eliminated straight-ticket voting. The Republicans believed that this second part would offset any advantages that the Democrats might gain through the use of voting by mail, especially in the highly Democratic strongholds of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. However, the June 2020 primary showed that this was not the case.

That election also exposed the holes in Act 77, and its amendment SB 422, especially in regard to not being able to count the mail-in ballots until Election Day. An audit of the primary election process resulted in no changes to procedures, changes that could have been implemented easily for the general election. Specifically, county election offices should have been allowed to start the pre-canvass of mail-in ballots (the opening of mail-in ballot envelopes and sending them through scanners) at least a week before Election Day, so results could have been tabulated at the same time results were coming in from the polls. Washington County was able to accomplish this during the general election. However the larger counties, with hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots to count, took days to get through the process. This is unacceptable, and the Republican Legislature knew this was going to occur, yet turned a blind eye and allowed these false accusations of voter fraud to occur instead of amending the law to fix the process.

Another oft-repeated lie concerning the Pennsylvania vote was that ballots “unlawfully” received after Election Day should not have been counted and were enough to give Biden the win over Trump. This is completely untrue. Before the election, Gov. Tom Wolf and Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar announced that mail-in ballots received within three days after the election but postmarked by Election Day would be counted. However, these ballots were challenged in court and were never actually included in the final totals. In total, they only numbered around 10,000 statewide (and fewer than 200 in Washington County), not enough to affect the final result.

Late in the night after the deadly attacks on the Capitol and Congress was able to continue the certification process, Congressman Conor Lamb spoke in support of the Pennsylvania Electoral College results. During his speech, Lamb called out the Republicans who were objecting for lying to their constituents about their claims of voter fraud. He stated, “The members who are repeating those lies should be ashamed of themselves. Their constituents should be ashamed of them.” By repeating these lies that Lamb referred to, Reschenthaler has failed his constituents and should resign from Congress. The citizens of Washington County and all of the constituents of the 14th Congressional District deserve better.

Ben Bright is chairman of the Washington County Democratic Committee.

CUSTOMER LOGIN

If you have an account and are registered for online access, sign in with your email address and password below.

NEW CUSTOMERS/UNREGISTERED ACCOUNTS

Never been a subscriber and want to subscribe, click the Subscribe button below.

Starting at $3.75/week.

Subscribe Today