Williamsport, Pa. — The Pa. Supreme Court has revived a years-long fight over access to Lycoming County's 2020 election ballot records, ordering a lower court to take a second look at a case brought by Woodward Township Supervisor Jeff Stroehmann.
In a July 27 order, the state's high court granted Stroehmann's petition for allowance of appeal, vacated a Commonwealth Court ruling that had sided with Lycoming County Voter Services, and sent the case back to Commonwealth Court for reconsideration.
The court's one-page order directs the lower court to reconsider the matter "in light of" the Pa. Supreme Court's own April 28 decision in a related case, Honey v. Lycoming County Officers of Voter Services.
The July 2024 Commonwealth Court ruling now being reconsidered upheld a May 2023 Lycoming County Court of Common Pleas order that denied Stroehmann access to certain 2020 election ballot records.Â
At the time, the state court found the records — cast vote records (CVRs) generated by the county's optical scanners and tabulators — fell under an election code exemption for the "contents of ballot boxes and voting machines," and were not subject to disclosure under right-to-know law.
That reasoning no longer holds up. In Honey, a case in which Stroehmann intervened alongside state Rep. Joe Hamm, R-84, and Lycoming County Republican Committee Chairman Donald Peters, the state Supreme Court ruled 6-0 that CVRs are not exempt from public disclosure.
Writing for the majority, Justice Daniel McCaffery held that Lycoming County's tabulators — the equipment that generates CVRs — do not meet the legal definition of "voting machines" under the Election Code, and that CVRs are instead disclosable "reports and other documents and records" in the county's custody. The court did note that any disclosure would proceed under the Election Code's own access procedures rather than the RTKL.
With Commonwealth Court's underlying reasoning vacated, Stroehmann's case now returns to that court to be reconsidered under the Supreme Court's new precedent.
Lycoming County Voter Services Director Forrest Lehman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A years-long pursuit
Stroehmann's push for access to Lycoming County's 2020 ballot data traces back to the RTKL request he filed with Voter Services shortly after the election, which the office denied.
He pursued the denial through the county court system for more than three years before Commonwealth Court's 2024 ruling against him — a ruling that tracked a nearly identical decision the same court reached in Heather Honey's separate case months earlier.
For more than half a decade, Stroehmann has been the region’s face for denying the results of the 2020 election, having been interviewed by national publications about his experience at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Â
Before that, in November 2020, he was a member of a group of Lycoming County Patriots that departed Williamsport on chartered buses bound for Washington, D.C., to support President Donald Trump's contested-election claims.Â
"We want to get down and show our enthusiasm toward making sure this was an honest and fair election," Stroehmann said at the time. "We are taking the rally to the president instead of the president taking the rally to us."
That trip came roughly two months before Stroehmann traveled to Washington again for the rallies that breached the capitol building, since saying he does not regret attending.Â
"I don't feel that I did anything wrong," Stroehmann told NPR afterward. "I just feel that I was vocalizing more, and a lot of people were."
Hamm and Peters — Stroehmann's co-intervenors in the Honey litigation — have also been visible allies of his in other settings. Both appeared alongside Stroehmann at a September 2025 vigil for conservative commentator Charlie Kirk hosted by Liberty Church in Williamsport, where Hamm addressed the crowd and Stroehmann co-hosted the event with the church's pastors.
Commented