Photo courtesy Rep. Joe D’Orsie’s Facebook page State Rep. Joseph D’Orsie, R-York, is pictured leading a tour of the House of Representatives chamber.

A Republican House member wants local voters to be able to recall county or municipal elected officials.

House Rep. Joseph D’Orsie, R-York, is circulating a co-sponsorship memorandum for a constitutional amendment that would establish a recall process, allowing the House of Representatives to initiate a recall election for a public official holding county or municipal office. Although initiated by the House, local voters would have the final say whether an official should be removed from office. The bill hasn’t been drafted yet.

“Although this method for a referendum should be used sparingly, such egregious acts as were displayed in Pennsylvania this election cycle deserve immediate consideration from the county electorate,” D’Orsie wrote in his co-sponsorship memorandum. “If we’re to have free, fair, and secure elections, as we’re consistently told by our state’s executive branch, we cannot simultaneously have elected officials at the county level usurping the law.”

The bill is motivated in part by what happened in Bucks County following this year’s election. Bucks County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia, a Democrat, voted to count provisional ballots that were missing one of two required voter signatures. She did so after being told by a county attorney that the state Supreme Court had already ruled that such ballots can’t be counted.

“We all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country and people violate laws any time they want,” she said. “So for me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention to it. There is nothing more important than counting votes.”

The video of her statement spread quickly among conservatives, often wrongly portraying it as justifying a separate vote by the Bucks County election board to count mail ballots that arrived at local election offices in undated or misdated envelopes.

“This is a BLATANT violation of the law and we intend to fight it every step of the way,” Lara Trump, President-elect Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law and co-chair of the RNC, wrote in a post on X that received 1.2 million views.

CNN reported recently that Ellis-Marseglia apologized for her statement in front of an angry crowd at a recent county commissioners meeting.

“On the heels of an election in which certain county commissioners in Pennsylvania openly and willfully defied state law, I’m introducing legislation that will allow for the removal of county or municipal elected officials before their term of office has expired,” D’Orsie wrote in his co-sponsorship memorandum.