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By Jeffrey Lord

Congressman Scott Perry has had the courage to stand up for the Constitution and the integrity of the American election system.

But The New York Times is disturbed https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/23/us/politics/scott-perry-trump-justice-department-election.html that the congressman had the nerve to introduce then-President Trump to a Justice Department official who believed, as did the president, that there were serious problems with the integrity of the 2020 election.

First, the Justice Department official, acting chief of the civil division Jeffrey Clark, worked for the president - as all executive branch federal employees in Washington do, no matter who the president is. Federal employees - and I have been both a White House aide to President Reagan and a senior staff member to a cabinet secretary - Bush 41 HUD Secretary Jack Kemp - have two choices as they go about their job.

One, follow the directions of their boss. Or two, if they disagree, resign. Mr. Clarks offense was to merely speak a few times with the president. No action was taken.

There was nothing wrong with Clark having conversations about election integrity with the president or with Congressman Perry. It was completely constitutional. To say that this was somehow a seditious scheme is simply untrue. Both the president and Congressman Perry were well within their rights.

Standing up on the floor of the House to oppose certifying electoral votes that the Congressman and many of his Republican colleagues believe were questionable is exactly the job of a congressman or senator. In fact, various Democrats in Congress had done exactly that in 2000, 2004, and 2016.

Never once mentioned by The Times is the hard fact that, sadly, Pennsylvania has a very long, and very bad, reputation for election integrity. Thus a discussion with a Pennsylvania Congressman, Mr. Clark and the president on this topic was clearly merited.

How bad is the Pennsylvania record on this score? A simple stroll through the PennLive archives and various books on Pennsylvania political history and there is story after story on election fraud in Pennsylvania.

From Penn Live is this headline from 2016: Tight election, voter fraud worries, power grab - no, not now, but 175+ years ago

The story recounts a bitterly fought Pennsylvania governors race replete with serious allegations of voter fraud in 1838.

The longtime (and late) Harrisburg Evening News political columnist Paul Beers wrote in his 1980 book on the history of Pennsylvania politics of Philadelphias debased political morals. In 1904, he wrote, a Philadelphia citizens committee estimated the number of fraudulent names on assessors lists of voters between 50,000 and 80,000.

Sixty-one years later in 1965, nothing had changed in Philadelphia elections when Republican Arlen Specter ran for Philadelphia District Attorney. In his memoirs the man who would become a five-term Pennsylvania US Senator discussed his first race for office, making a point of discussing tampering with voting machines, a standard Philadelphia ploy.

Twenty-nine years later in 1994 The New York Times itself was reporting this: Saying Philadelphias election system had collapsed under a massive scheme by Democrats to steal a State Senate election in November, a federal judge today took the rare step of invalidating the vote and ordered the seat filled by the Republican candidate.

Just last year, a Democratic election judge in Philadelphia and a former Democratic congressman from Philadelphia were indicted for voter fraud in three different elections - 2014, 2015 and 2016.

Complaints about the politicization of the Justice Department by President Trump are particularly rich. The DOJ headquarters, itself, is named for the late Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, famously appointed by his brother, President John F. Kennedy. One Kennedy biography after another has long established that the Kennedys ran a seriously politicized Justice Department. More recently, President Obamas attorney general, Eric Holder, described his role running the Justice Department as being the presidents political wingman.

Congressman Perry, decidedly a mainstream Reagan conservative, has also been attacked for believing a conspiracy theory from fringe groups about attempts by ISIS to infiltrate the US southern border. In fact, it was the Obama-era under secretary for intelligence and analysis at the Obama-run Department of Homeland Security who did indeed tell then-Arizona Senator John McCain in a 2014 Senate hearing that there were members of ISIS plotting to do just that. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dhs-confirms-isis-planning-infiltration-of-us-southern-border

Does the literal three centuries-long repeated problem in Pennsylvania mean there was voter fraud in 2020? No. But the pattern is decidedly there - and it should be thoroughly investigated and the Pennsylvania election system be seriously reformed before the next elections in 2022 and 2024.

To sum up? Congressman Perrys constituents have a right to expect the Pennsylvania and larger American election system be run with the utmost integrity and openness. The Congressman - and many of his Republican colleagues in and out of Pennsylvania - has stood up to support just that.

For which he deserves thanks.

Jeffrey Lord is a Republican political analyst and a member of PennLives Editorial Board.

Originally posted here:
There are reasons to stand with Scott Perry | Opinion - pennlive.com