Kathy Rapp part of another election lawsuit
Rep. Kathy Rapp is running for another term in the state House completely unopposed.
No one is challenging her in April’s primary and there are no Democrats on the primary ballot.
She still has thrown her support behind a lawsuit in federal court that challenges election-related issues implemented by President Joe Biden and Gov. Josh Shapiro.
The suit — brought by 27 legislators, all candidates in the 2024 election cycle — was filed late last month in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
Defendants include Biden, his Cabinet secretaries, and Shapiro, among others.
The Biden-specific section of the lawsuit stems from Executive Order 14019.
The order, according to the White House, states that federal “(a)gencies shall consider ways to expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process.”
The order calls for a redesign of vote.gov and specifically calls for efforts to increase employee voting, equal access for voters with disabilities and military and overseas citizens as well as for those in federal custody, among other provisions.
The legislators claim that “the mandate placed upon federal agencies by Executive Order 14019 has substantially influenced the operation of Pennsylvania elections.
“Executive Order 14019 directs all non-independent executive agencies to engage in voter registration and to solicit and facilitate third-party organizations to conduct voter registration on agency premises,”they argue “including those located in the state of Pennsylvania, so it is certain that other agencies are carrying out similar efforts without disclosing their unlawful activities to the public or to the Pennsylvania state legislature.”
The suit is particularly critical of a requirement for “all federal agencies to identify and partner with specified partisan third party organizations chosen by the President Biden administration whose names and roles are not transparent but are willfully withheld from the public.”
The legislators allege that the executive action “nullifies the votes of the individual legislators” by implementing federal election regulation that unlawfully violates the Electors Clause and the Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Arguments in the lawsuit then shift to a proposal by the Shapiro administration for automatic voter registration through PennDOT.
“The executive action taken by Governor Shapiro nullifies the votes and diminishes the influence of the individual legislators, nullifies the enactments of the State Legislature, violates the Electors Clause, violates the Elections Clause, deprives the legislators of their particular rights in exercising constitutional powers specifically delegated to them, and jeopardizes candidates’ rights to an election free from fraud and abuse,” they claim.
They call the program a “fundamentally new voter registration schema wherein applications with incomplete and inconsistent voter registration applications are accepted.”
The request is for a federal district judge to set aside the executive order and find the automatic voter registration program unconstitutional and enjoin, or prohibit, the Shapiro administration from “funding, supporting or facilitating” the effort.



