PA Supreme Court candidate Carolyn Carluccio has “no idea” if Biden won 2020 election

During an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial Board, Carluccio was asked if President Biden won the election and she responded by saying “I have no idea.” After seeing a surprised reaction from one of the board members, Carluccio changed her response. 

Judge Carolyn Carluccio, the Republican nominee for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, told the Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial Board that she had “no idea” if President Joe Biden won the 2020 election. 

The editorial board on Tuesday endorsed Judge Daniel McCaffery, the Democratic nominee for the state Supreme Court, but as much as it was an endorsement for McCaffery, it was also a scathing anti-endorsement for Carluccio. 

“It would be nice if one day we could interview a republican and not need to ask them the who won question. But we are clearly not there yet,” Daniel Pearson, an editorial writer for the Inquirer, posted on X, which was formerly known as Twitter. 

Pearson went on to call Carluccio’s response “a step backwards” from Judge Kevin Brobson’s response in 2021 when Brobson was running for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. 

According to the Inquirer, Carluccio was asked if Biden won the election and she responded by saying “I have no idea.” After seeing a surprised reaction from one of the board members, Carluccio changed her response. 

“Yeah, I think he’s the president. Obviously, he’s our president. I believe he won the election. There are people in my party who don’t believe that. I do believe that I’ll be very clear about it. And I should have just been more direct in the beginning,” Carluccio went on to clarify. 

Pro-democracy advocates and voting rights organizations condemned Carluccio’s comments to the editorial board. 

“While Judge McCaffery is running to protect our democracy, constitutional rights, and freedoms, it is clear that his opponent is more concerned about appeasing the Trump base and sowing discontent,” Kadida Kenner, CEO of the New Pennsylvania Project, a voting rights organization, said in a statement. 

“By continuously embracing election denial, a direct attack on democracy rooted in the efforts to cancel the votes of Black, Indigenous and other historically disenfranchised voters’ communities, Carolyn Carluccio is proving once again why Pennsylvanians can’t trust her on our state Supreme Court.”

If elected to the supreme court, Carluccio could be the deciding justice on cases related to voting issues before and after elections. In the days before the 2022 midterms, the state Supreme Court ordered county election officials to not count any mail-in ballots that were not dated or misdated by voters. Bolts Magazine explained that the court issued a 3-3 ruling on the case and argued how Carluccio could impact voting rights in the state as a member of the court.

 The Inquirer board also pressed Carluccio when she told them that she would follow Act 77, which was passed by the Republican controlled General Assembly in 2019 and legalized no-excuse mail-in voting. Her response was different from what she told voters at an Erie GOP event during the Republican primary. At the time she said the law was “bad for the commonwealth.” 

“After these comments, there’s no way Pennsylvanians can trust Carolyn Carluccio to side with them over the former President and his supporters,” said Ashley McBride, the State Director for the progressive organization, For Our Future PA.

“Every voter in Pennsylvania deserves a Supreme Court that will protect voting rights and fair elections.”