Butler attorneys King, Breth win state Supreme Court ruling on public access to voting data
Butler attorney Tom King called Tuesday’s unanimous ruling from the state’s high court justices providing public access to digital voting data the “biggest election integrity case in Pa. history.”
His law partner Tom Breth said he hopes the ruling renews public confidence in the state election system.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling reversed a Commonwealth Court ruling appealed by three Lycoming County residents represented by Breth and King, and set a binding statewide precedent by allowing public access to digital records of votes cast kept by counties.
“I hope it helps restore public confidence in the election process in Pennsylvania,” Breth said Thursday.
Litigation began in 2021 in an effort by Lebanon County voter Heather Honey to obtain Lycoming County’s cast vote records from each precinct’s vote scanning tabulator and the county’s central tabulator from the 2020 presidential election through the state’s Right-to-Know Law process.
The county’s voter services office denied the request, a decision upheld by the state Office of Open Records.
Honey appealed to Common Pleas Court, which ruled she had no standing to pursue the appeal because she isn’t registered to vote in Lycoming County. The court granted a request to intervene in the appeal from registered Lycoming County voters Jeffrey D. Stroehmann, Donald C. Peters and Joseph Hamm, who Breth and King represented.
The court ruled the records are public and disclosing the records does not violate Pennsylvania’s constitutional ballot secrecy requirement.
Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt appealed that ruling to the Commonwealth Court, which reversed the Common Pleas Court order. The appellants appealed that order to the Supreme Court, which ruled in their favor.
“It’s about moving forward, not the 2020 election,” Breth said. “Anytime you get a unanimous Supreme Court decision on such a big issue it’s tremendously exciting.”
The Democratic-majority Supreme Court said its decision is a way to “satisfy the voting public that our elections are safe, secure and accurate” while preserving the state constitution's requirement that votes remain secret.
The decision defines cast vote records as “spreadsheets of raw data pulled from the cast ballots. They are not the physical ballots contained in the ballot box.”
Breth said cast vote records list county voting precincts, show the ballots cast in each precinct and show how election software tabulated each ballot, which are assigned randomized codes by the software.
With Tuesday’s court order in place, the public can look at the vote cast records, which includes images of each ballot, to determine if the election software accurately counted the votes on the ballots, he said.
“Anyone looking at that information can’t identify the specific voter. Its all randomized and coded. It’s all done in a confidential manner,” Breth said. “For the first time, this information is going to be made available to the public and it’s not a partisan issue. The public will be able to evaluate the information to make a decision if the election process correctly tabulated ballots.”
He said the Thomas Moore Society, which he represents as special counsel, also is a client in the case. The society is a conservative national nonprofit law firm.
