In an extraordinary visual, all three Republican members of the Tioga County commissioners took turns reading a letter directed at Republican State Sen. Doug Mastriano, urging him to abandon his quest for voting records from the 2020 Presidential election from this small north-central county.

Mastriano, whose district includes all of Adams County, most of Franklin and parts of Cumberland and York counties, has threatened the commissioners of the three counties with subpoenas if they do not comply. He was attempting to launch an Arizona-style audit of the state’s results in which President Joe Biden defeated ex-Republican President Donald Trump by about 80,000 votes to win Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes, but now a top Republican official has cut him out of the process.

First, a word of explanation on why Tioga County has three Republican commissioners and has had them for more than two terms. Typically, there is minority representation on the commissioners’ board, because two Republicans and two Democrats are nominated in the primaries, and the top three vote-getters win in the November general election, ensuring one is from the other party.

In the last election in 2019, incumbent Republican Commissioner Roger Bunn ran as a write-in candidate on the Democratic ticket and received far more votes than either of the two Democratic ballot candidates. This is a testament to the lopsided hold that the Republicans have on county politics in Tioga, whose county seat is Wellsboro.

Mastriano, a strong Trump supporter, is chair of the Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee and is frequently mentioned as a gubernatorial candidate in 2022. There have been many questions about whether the committee he chairs should even be involved in requesting these kinds of documents, since the State and Local Government Committee, chaired by David Argall, R-Schuylkill, would be the more likely committee to take up the matter if it chose to do so, but it hasn’t.

Philadelphia, one of the other two counties whose election records were sought, has refused outright. The other, York County, told Mastriano that he had to come up with more authoritative information before the commissioners will even entertain such a request.

In their statement, the Tioga commissioners accused Mastriano of creating “unnecessary chaos.

“It is time for Sen. Mastriano to withdraw his demands and to let responsible Republicans get back to work on subjects such as recovering from COVID-19, addressing the opioid crisis and the ‘help wanted’ issue,” the statement said.

Commissioners across the state fear what happened in Fulton County could happen in theirs if they let third parties or unauthorized companies examine voting machine records from last year’s election.

Pennsylvania’s top election official, Acting Secretary of State Veronica Degraffenreid, has decertified the voting machines of Fulton County after its commissioners disclosed that they had agreed to requests by local Republican lawmakers and allowed a software firm to inspect the machines as part of an “audit.” Her action almost certainly means that Fulton County will have to buy new voting machines or, as it did in last May’s primaries, lease new ones.

What is really troubling is that the Tioga County commissioners have been receiving death threats because of their opposition to Mastriano’s demands. In an interview, Tioga Commissioner Erick Coolidge said the commissioners will not yield to disrespectful allegations. “We’re better than this,” Coolidge said. “You can have an opinion, but in the exchange show civility, respect, honor.”

If the commissioners would have acquiesced to Mastriano’s demands, Coolidge said, he estimates that it could cost the county more than $1 million to replace voting machines and other paraphernalia that would be decertified.

Meanwhile, a top Republican, Senate Pro Tem Jake Corman of Centre County, has appointed another lawmaker to lead a review of the 2020 election, effectively cutting Mastriano from the process.

Mastriano blasted Corman during an interview late last week, prompting Corman to say, “It is discouraging to realize that he (Mastriano) was only ever interested in politics and showmanship and not actually getting things done.”

“Despite this setback, we remain committed to conducting a full investigatory audit of recent elections to improve our election system going forward,” Corman said, who appointed Rep. Cris Dush, R-Jefferson, to take over for Mastriano.

I congratulate the Tioga commissioners on their courageous stand, which has angered many Mastriano and Trump supporters, and I encourage other boards of commissioners which might be approached to resist this misguided effort to subvert the will of Pennsylvania voters. Even with Mastriano out of the way, this threat is not over.

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.