HARRISBURG, Pa. – As part of Friday’s bill-signing frenzy to finalize the 2022-23 state budget, Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed two controversial bills.
He vetoed a bill that would prohibit transgender students from participating on women and girls’ sports teams, as he’d promised to do since the bill was introduced in 2021. He claimed that the House Republicans who sponsored it did so “solely to bully and oppress vulnerable children.”
“I have been crystal clear during my time in office that hate has no place in Pennsylvania, especially discrimination against already marginalized youth representing less than half of 1 percent of Pennsylvania’s population,” Wolf said in a statement. “These members should be ashamed of themselves for proposing and voting on policies that are discriminatory, unnecessary and incredibly harmful.”
In a statement, state Rep. Valerie Gaydos, R-Moon, and four other House Republican women who sponsored the bill said Wolf’s veto shows he doesn’t support women.
“Unfortunately, and predictably, Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed the bill, making it clear what we knew all along — he does not support women and their opportunity to compete on a level playing field,” the representatives said in a release. “He does not support Title IX and the important advances women have made in scholastic athletics in the last 50 years.”
Wolf also vetoed a bill that would have allowed any registered voter to be a poll watcher at any polling place in the state. He said that “undermines the integrity of our election process and encourages voter intimidation.”
Currently, poll watchers must be registered to vote in the county where they watch. Had the bill become law, voters from anywhere in the state could be a poll watcher in any of Pennsylvania’s cities, some of which had been targets of unfounded voter fraud accusations during the 2020 election. Civic groups statewide had urged Wolf to veto the bill.
The poll watchers bill was introduced by state Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Franklin, who is the Republican nominee for governor and one of the main voices in the state pushing that the 2020 election was “stolen” from former President Donald Trump. Mastriano did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“This bill makes it possible for bad faith partisan operatives to target a specific neighborhood or group of voters in an attempt to challenge the eligibility of voters, make poll workers’ jobs more difficult, and disrupt the counting of ballots,” Wolf said in his veto message. “This will only serve to slow down the election process and restrict access to the ballot box.”
Wolf also vetoed a third bill on Friday, one that was a portion of the budget regarding policies at the Department of Human Services. Lawmakers reworked the legislation and placed it in a different bill after receiving the veto.
Wolf has vetoed 61 bills since he took office in 2015, more than any other governor in recent history. He vetoed nearly 20 bills in 2020, as lawmakers tried to reopen parts of the economy that Wolf shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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