A recent lawsuit brought by Republicans is using the state's own findings from an audit last year to challenge the General Election results.

On Nov. 24, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar certified the Nov. 3 election results, and Gov. Tom Wolf soon afterward signed the Certificate of Ascertainment to officially declare President-elect Joe Biden the winner of the state's election, giving Biden the state's 20 Electoral College votes.

But lawsuits were filed in battleground states challenging Biden's victory, and Pennsylvania has been the site of many such suits.

On Friday, state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-12th, and other Republicans filed a lawsuit in Commonwealth Court, asking a judge to order a stop to the state's results from being cast in the Electoral College for Biden. The lawsuit also argues that the U.S. Supreme Court must rule on matters in this suit and others like it.

The plaintiffs are represented by the Butler-based law firm, Dillon McCandless King Coulter & Graham, whose attorneys have taken on a number of recent election-related lawsuits. Along with Boockvar and Wolf, the suit names as 19 defendants, all of whom are Democratic presidential electors residing in counties that Biden won.

A spokeswoman for Wolf's office called the suit an attempt to “spread disinformation and ignore reality. Allegations of fraud and tired conspiracy theories have been repeatedly debunked and dismissed by the courts.”

The spokeswoman continued, “The facts are clear: Pennsylvania had a free and fair election, and pretending otherwise should be rejected by all of us. Millions of Pennsylvanians followed the rules and voted. Local election officials and volunteers — both Democrats and Republicans — worked tirelessly amid a pandemic so voters could decide this election.”

The suit relies on two main arguments. The first is built off a 2019 audit report from the State Auditor General Eugene DePasquale looking into the performance of the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors. Known by its acronym SURE, the registry is the state's electronic system used for election matters like containing a database of all registered voters.The audit was initiated by the Department of State to assess the system's performance for things like voter accuracy, security protocol and other issues related to running a voting system. In the auditor's report, DePasquale reports that they were unable to complete an accurate report because that Department of State and others didn't cooperate with them. Specifically, the state department's “denial of access to critical documents” led DePasquale to not be able to assess the state's accuracy for voter records and security protocols of SURE.Overall, DePasquale's office provided 50 recommendations to strengthen the state department's election policies, management controls, the accuracy of the voter registration records and cyber technology-based security.The Auditor General's office declined to comment but in the audit, DePasquale comments on the Department of State's resistance.“Regrettably, we were surprised and disappointed that Department of State's response contained in this report indicates that it strongly disagrees with many of our findings and mischaracterizes the information that was provided or not provided to us during the course of our audit,” DePasquale wrote in the report.

The second argument made in the suit relates to an unfounded claim of election fraud made by a man who claims he observed wrongdoing while he was working as a truck driver for a U.S. Postal Service contractor. The lawsuit cites the claims of Jesse Morgan, who first told his story on Dec. 2 during a news conference in Arlington, Va., convened by a Republican lawyer to present alleged evidence of election fraud. The lawsuit claims that Morgan said he picked up Pennsylvania state ballots from a collection site in New York and was tasked with delivering around 260,000 ballots to Lancaster on Oct. 21.Morgan said the trailer with the ballots he was delivering went missing at a Lancaster postal facility. Nobody has been charged with any crimes relating to such an incident, according to reports and authorities in Lancaster County.Morgan's claims have made their way to President Donald Trump, who spread the claims on the social media site Twitter.The number of mail ballots that arrived in Lancaster, according to Morgan's story, would have been more than were actually requested in the county. There were 109,000 Lancaster County voters who requested mail ballots for the general election, 91,000 returned them. Morgan's claim is more than twice the number of Lancaster voters who made a mail ballot request, according to election data.And last week, U.S. Attorney General William Barr said the Justice Department had not found evidence of widespread fraud capable of changing the outcome of the presidential election.The spokeswoman for Wolf's office noted Barr's finding and also said, “Chris Krebs, who oversaw election cybersecurity for the Trump administration, said the election was the most secure in history. Pennsylvanians would be better served if legislative Republicans would spend as much time helping to protect them during the pandemic as they do attacking our democracy and trying to steal the vote of Pennsylvanians.”The suit also takes issue with what it calls the procedure of notifying people of their misfiled mail in ballots and providing them with the opportunity to fix it. The suit claims the state's election code doesn't provide for this kind of process, making it illegal.