Hearings are expected to be convened this week in Pennsylvania over a proposed audit of ballots cast in the 2020 presidential election and there are already questions over whether it can be conducted legally, WSKG is reporting.

The proposal to audit the votes comes as a similar effort staggers to a close in Arizona amid accusations that it is both a "sham and a fraud." Some Republican Party lawmakers are questioning the proposal almost ten months after the election was conducted.

The report notes that State Senator Doug Mastriano (R-) -- an avid Trump supporter -- was abruptly dismissed on Friday by Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman (R) as the leader of the effort, with Corman designating Sen. Cris Dush (R) as the lead with the addition of taking over Mastriano's chairmanship of the Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee.

As the hearings begin, Corman is already on the defensive over how the audit will be defended and some of his colleagues are wondering about the legality of funding it.

Dush and Mastriano both traveled to Phoenix in June to see the audit there up close.

In a recent interview Corman claimed, "We as the oversight body of elections have to ensure that people feel confident that elections were done fairly. I don't think, I know they don't feel confident in that now, and we need to provide that stability moving forward and if our work leads to someone else taking that work into a court of law, and changing those results, then so be it."

A special Senate committee already investigated the 2020 election. That effort focused on future contests and did not attempt to prove baseless allegations of voter fraud. After months of work, that body released a report suggesting a litany of election code changes that ultimately were vetoed by Governor Tom Wolf.

“This bill is ultimately not about improving access to voting or election security, but about restricting the freedom to vote,” Wolf said in a statement. “If adopted, it would threaten to disrupt election administration, undermine faith in government, and invite costly, time-consuming, and destabilizing litigation.”

Democrats said the bill was a product of Republicans’ refusal to accept the results of the Nov. 3 presidential contest and a solution in search of a problem. There was no widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, and multiple government officials and audits confirmed the accuracy of the votes.

Penn State Harrisburg Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Administration Dan Mallinson said the GOP is using support for new election investigations as a tool to attract Trump supporters.

“I think Republicans are trying to figure out how to keep these voters engaged and keep them coming back,” Mallinson said. “And so in the short term, the anger about losing the 2020 Election seems like something that may motivate those folks to come out.”

That strategy, he said, is worrying not only because it might be unsustainable for Republicans in the long term, but because of how it can undermine the country’s democratic underpinnings.

“If that’s what you’re going to continue to leverage, then you have to continue to leverage grievance and I feel like that just leads to a very dark place,” Mallinson continued. “You’re no longer debating real policy, but you’re trying to fire people up with grievance.”

In recent days and months, Trump allies have held up Corman as an obstacle, even drawing Trump’s wrath on Twitter in June, saying Corman “is fighting as though he were a Radical Left Democrat.” Democrats, meanwhile, say Corman is too cowardly to stand up to right-wing conspiracy theories about the election.

The report goes on to note that Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro has already threatened a lawsuit which has led Corman to concede, "We have to make sure legally we're on the right spot to make sure we can absorb a challenge, which we will get."

Then there is the matter of paying for the audit with WSKG reporting, "Corman's office has been unable to answer is how to pay for an Arizona-style audit without private donations."

That, in turn, has led state senate GOP officials to express concern "... about the legality of funding the undertaking with private money."

In light of the controversial and much-derided Arizona audit, Corman also expressed anxiety over how a Pennsylvania investigation will be perceived.

Senate GOP officials are concerned about the legality of funding the undertaking with private money, Corman’s office said.

But in Arizona, Trump backers reported raising more than $5.7 million for the widely discredited and partisan election audit sponsored by Senate Republicans there.

Corman seemed to acknowledge some criticism of how Arizona Senate Republicans had selected contractors.

They selected a cybersecurity firm that had no prior experience in elections, never submitted a formal bid for the work and had an owner who had tweeted support for conspiracy theories claiming Biden’s victory was illegitimate.

If Pennsylvania’s Senate Republicans need money, they may already have it sitting around: the Republican-controlled Legislature has long sat on reserves of more than $100 million, and the Senate alone last year reported $66 million in its reserve account.

"We want credibility to what we are doing, and I think it's important that we get people involved that don't have ties to anybody, right? That are professional, that will do the job so that we can stand behind the results," he explained.

“We have to make sure legally we’re on the right spot to make sure we can absorb a challenge, which we will get,” Corman said.

While Corman and some other Republican senators might avoid repeating Trump’s baseless election claims, they continue to perpetuate the idea that Democrats cheated and blame Democrats — not Trump — for sowing doubt in the election.