Alex Brandon/AP Photo
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro speaks ahead of President Joe Biden at a campaign event, April 16, 2024, in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Leaving Gov. Josh Shapiro back home in Pennsylvania may have been the smoothest move yet for the Harris-Walz ticket. One of the country’s most popular governors could be far more valuable in charge of a battleground state than on the campaign trail—especially since, in a short space of time, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has turned the chore of designated attack dog into an America’s Dad role that he performs with an authentic zest none of the other men on Vice President Kamala Harris’s short list could have mustered.
There’s also been a collective sigh of relief in Pennsylvania now that everyone can avoid the jockeying for position between a Democratic House, a Republican Senate, and Austin Davis, the 34-year-old African American lieutenant governor who would have succeeded Shapiro if he had been selected for the veep slot.
Pennsylvania has been one of the top states for lawsuits related to the 2020 election and broader election administration issues, and Shapiro has figured in many of them. By his own count, Shapiro as state attorney general handled about 40 cases of voter fraud brought by former President Trump’s campaign or Republican state lawmakers in 2020. And he’s continued to mop up after the election since becoming governor. He’s overseen the creation of a new fact-checking website to handle queries about voting and elections and an Election Threats Task Force to provide reliable voting information to respond to lies, conspiracy theories, and other types of misinformation and disinformation.
The state’s legal teams and election administrators are perhaps the country’s most well-tested set of experts on the threats to electoral processes. With 67 counties to monitor in arguably the country’s most consequential swing state, they’ve seen their fair share of election snafus. There have been mass challenges to voter registrations. Counties have run out of ballots or misprinted them or decided to hand-count them. A new report on election certification issues in eight states by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) in Washington identified six counties—Allegheny, Berks, Fayette, Lancaster, Luzerne, and Northampton—headed by “rogue officials” (as CREW described them), who have refused to certify elections since 2020. Another locale, Fulton County, has invited outside parties to evaluate its voting machines.
The reservoir of GOP election tampering in Pennsylvania elections is wide and deep. Shortly after President Joe Biden won in 2020, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton attempted to persuade the courts to circumvent the Biden victory. He sued Pennsylvania (and Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin), alleging that the states had adopted unfair practices like mail-in and early-voting balloting during the pandemic.
An incredulous Shapiro, then attorney general, blasted Paxton. “These continued attacks on our fair and free election system are beyond meritless, beyond reckless,” he said in a statement, “they are a scheme by the President of the United States and some in the Republican party to disregard the will of the people—and name their own victors. This isn’t a pick your own ending novel—this is a Democracy.”
The Supreme Court had no use for the audacious Texan either and served up what they thought was a more appropriate denouement. In a unanimous decision, the justices ruled that Texas did not have standing to bring the case.
Undeterred, state Republicans lawmakers tried other tactics, such as a legislative subpoena conducted in conjunction with a so-called “forensic investigation.” In 2021, two state senators decided that they wanted to subpoena private data including portions of Social Security numbers for every voter in Pennsylvania. In 2020, there were nine million registered voters in the state.
A lower court noted that the lawmakers were under pressure from former President Trump to perform a “forensic investigation” that was part of a larger effort to subvert the 2020 elections and that their explanations for trying to get the data were neither “consistent or believable.” Nor was there a plan in place to keep the data secure.
Moreover, the effort violated the Pennsylvania constitution’s grant of the right of individuals to control their personal information. In February, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania finally tossed out the various appeals and ruled that the subpoena could no longer be enforced since it had been introduced in a two-year session that had already ended.
The GOP hits kept coming after Shapiro’s 2022 gubernatorial win. In 2023, Shapiro implemented one of his campaign promises, to expand voter access through automatic voter registration (AVR) to people signing up for driver’s licenses and ID cards at state transportation centers. All comers get signed up unless they opt out. Twenty-three states have adopted AVR.
A Republican state representative filed a lawsuit against Shapiro, President Biden, and a handful of federal officials and departments on behalf of the Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus, arguing that their “individual rights as state legislators are injured” by the certain executive actions and since the lawmakers were effectively denied the opportunity to vote on this and other voting access measures. In March, U.S. District Court Judge Jennifer Wilson ruled that the lawmakers did not have standing to make the case; the legislature as a whole would have to make the challenge. Wilson, a Trump appointee, dismissed the case.
Shapiro’s political future may well be defined by his ability to deliver a fair election in the electoral prize that is the Keystone State, but it will be rough going for a man with national ambitions who has embraced election administration integrity as a core value. The challenge for Shapiro is whether Pennsylvania can quash Republicans’ time-tested tactics and pivot to beat back new threats in 2024 and beyond. He’ll also have to impress upon the voters that the dangers posed by politicians unwilling to take the “L” and make the necessary compromises to thrive in a civil society are best beaten back by exercising the right to vote.
