County Solicitor and Warehouse Personnel Physically Tore Up Original Tabulator Tally Tapes and Return Sheets – Declared Records “Had No Audit Value” Because They Would Not Match Certified Results (PA)

Named witness Regina Miller, present at the Delaware County election warehouse, provided sworn testimony that County Solicitor Thomas Gallagher and warehouse personnel James Ziegelhoffer physically tore election data into pieces – specifically the original November 3, 2020 machine tally tapes and return sheets – and placed them in the trash. The most legally significant element of this account is the stated justification: Ziegelhoffer declared that the destruction was necessary because the tapes “had no audit value because they would not match the election results.” If true – and this is a serious sworn-witness allegation, not yet adjudicated – this statement constitutes an acknowledgment that the physical tabulator record did not match the certified results, and that the records were destroyed specifically to prevent that discrepancy from becoming part of the reviewable record. Tabulator tally tapes are the primary paper audit trail for electronic tabulation; their destruction eliminates the only physical record that would allow independent verification of whether machine-counted totals were accurately reported. Delaware County was also missing: 125 of 428 tally tapes for Scanner 1; 137 of 428 ballot-count tapes; 255 of 428 open-poll tapes; and 233 of 428 zero-report tapes – the records establishing that machines were empty before voting began, without which there is no documentary basis to rule out pre-loaded vote counts.