The House Administration Committee next week will hold a hearing on the not-very-smoothly run November 2022 US House election in Pennsylvania’s 8th District, a contest marred somewhat by a shortage of ballots in the Luzerne County portion of the district that might have dissuaded some voters from showing up and having to cast provisional ballots, Punchbowl News reports.
Which would sound good and great if any of the witnesses had any actual position with administration of the election, but the sole testimony lined up for the hearing titled “2022 Midterms Look Back Series: Government Voter Suppression in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania” on March 28th is that of loser GOP candidate Jim Bognet, who fell 6,600 votes short against incumbent Dem Congressman Matt Cartwright – a rematch of the 2020 race in which Bognet lost by a similar margin.
So rather than hearing from the officials tasked with running the election – people who are reportedly willing to testify if Committee Chairman Bryan Steil would just wait for Luzerne DA Sam Sanguedolce to finish his investigation – the hearing will instead center on the probably not very accurate complaints of the loser. Even MAGA Congressman Dan Meuser, one of over 120 House Republicans who signed a brief in support of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s batshit December 2020 Supreme Court lawsuit to overturn Joe Biden’s win and whose district encompasses the other side of Luzerne questioned why the hearing’s title was so “conclusory,” saying “we shouldn’t be giving that perception” by including the word “suppression.” Well he did for a little bit, before Steil had a chat with him. Meuser then said that the hearing could help the DA’s investigation. “If we were to learn something from their report, maybe they’ll learn something from our report,” per Punchbowl.