Divided Pennsylvania House approves audit of 2020 election, citing inconsistencies and confusion in electorate | Ford Turner/The Morning Call

A deeply divided state House on Thursday voted to approve a Republican-sponsored measure that sets up an audit of the 2020 election, citing inconsistencies and confusion in the electorate as evidence the process must be improved for future contests. The vote was 112 in favor of the audit and 90 against, with all Republicans and three Democrats voting in favor. “There is no need to fear this audit. I welcome it. We all should welcome it, to find out what went right and what went wrong,” said Bedford County Republican Rep. Jesse Topper, the prime sponsor of the audit resolution. The intent, he said, is not to look for fraud but to get an in-depth assessment of how the Nov. 3 election was carried out, in time to possibly take legislative action early next year to improve the system. The resolution directs the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee ― a bipartisan committee with members from both House and Senate ― to oversee a “risk-limiting” audit. It allows the committee to hire an outside contractor to do the work. It may begin almost immediately and is expected to be complete by early February, at the latest. Democrats attacked the proposal, calling it unconstitutional, damaging to democracy and unnecessary. Gov. Tom Wolf issued a written statement during the debate, saying any audit done by this approach would be “incomplete, duplicative and unreliable.”

Full Article: Divided Pennsylvania House approves audit of 2020 election, citing inconsistencies and confusion in electorate – The Morning Call

Pennsylvania: Led By Giuliani, Trump Campaign Effort To Stop Certification Falters | Pam Fessler/NPR

Things did not go well Tuesday for the Trump campaign’s effort to stop certification of the Pennsylvania vote count — which has Joe Biden ahead by more than 73,000 votes. At almost the same time the president’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was in federal court in Williamsport, Pa., complaining that Republican observers were illegally denied access to vote counting in Philadelphia and other Democratic areas, the state Supreme Court in Harrisburg concluded otherwise. By a 5-2 vote, it ruled that Philadelphia election officials had acted properly in their handling of the observation process. The Trump campaign had argued that GOP representatives were kept too far away to see whether there were any irregularities, but the court said they were able to view election workers “performing their duties,” as required. It was a major loss for the president and his campaign’s flailing effort to overturn the election results. Republicans have filed suits in several states seeking to invalidate thousands of votes, but have lost almost every case so far. While the election observer claim was removed from the Pennsylvania lawsuit, Giuliani told U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Brann that he hoped to reinsert it with an amended complaint.

Full Article: Trump Effort To Stop Pennsylvania Certification, Led By Giuliani, Falters : NPR

Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejects complaints about Philadelphia election observations | Zach Montellaro and Josh Gerstein/Politico

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled 5-2 on Tuesday that observers’ rights to watch ballot counting was sufficient in Philadelphia, rejecting a claim from President Donald Trump’s campaign that poll observers didn’t get “meaningful access.” The Trump campaign argued that observers were stationed too far away to actually see the process of counting votes, and a lower court initially agreed with them, ordering that they be allowed closer to the process. The state Supreme Court, which had previously rejected other Republican arguments, vacated that lower court order on Tuesday. “We conclude the Board did not act contrary to law in fashioning its regulations governing the positioning of candidate representatives during the precanvassing and canvassing process, as the Election Code does not specify minimum distance parameters for the location of such representatives,” the court wrote in its majority order. “Critically, we find the Board’s regulations as applied herein were reasonable in that they allowed candidate representatives to observe the Board conducting its activities as prescribed under the Election Code.” The Trump campaign called the ruling “inexplicable” and signaled the legal battle wasn’t over. “This ruling is contrary to the clear purpose of the law,” Jenna Ellis, a campaign senior legal adviser, said in a statement. “The lower court rightly recognized that the intent and purpose of the Pennsylvania law is to allow election watchers from both parties to actually see the ballots close enough to inspect them, and thus prevent partisan ballot counting in secret.“

Full Article: Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejects complaints about Philadelphia election observations – POLITICO

Pennsylvania: Trump’s legal push to disrupt election results is on its last legs. What’s his campaign still fighting in court? | Jeremy Roebuck/Philadelphia Inquirer

While Trump’s campaign continues to pursue legal challenges, there was no active case left with enough ballots in question to reverse Joe Biden’s 69,000-vote advantage in the state as of Monday afternoon. Trump campaign lawyers now say their goal isn’t to overturn Biden’s lead but to whittle his 1.01-point lead down to 0.5 points and trigger an automatic recount. And this week is likely to prove decisive in the one case on which the campaign has pinned its remaining hopes — a suit seeking a court order barring Pennsylvania from certifying its final vote tally. It’s worth noting again that despite the outsized rhetoric from the president and his allies about widespread and systemic voter fraud, none of the suits his campaign has filed so far has contained even one allegation — let alone evidence — of a single vote being deliberately cast illegally. What’s more, campaign lawyers, when pressed by Pennsylvania judges in court, have consistently acknowledged that they are not alleging voter fraud but are instead seeking to disqualify ballots submitted by lawful voters based on legal technicalities.

Full Article: Trump’s legal push to disrupt Pa.’s election results is on its last legs. What’s his campaign still fighting in court?

Pennsylvania: Trump campaign presses election cases as attorneys abandon key claims, courts deny legal challenges | Emily Previti/WHYY

Quairah Tucker votes in every election, but this year brought a lot of firsts. She’s one of millions of Pennsylvanians issued a mailed ballot. Since hers never arrived, Tucker was among more than 100,000 who voted provisionally at the polls. More than a week later, she received a letter in the mail, saying her ballot was being challenged. “When I was at the polling place, I thought that my vote counted,” Tucker said. “I didn’t expect to have to come in and fight for my rights, for my vote counting.” Tucker and more than 1,000 other Delaware County voters had their provisional ballots challenged by the Trump campaign for any number of reasons: signing in the wrong spot, using the wrong date, failing to seal the ballot envelope properly and so on. In Tucker’s case, she put her name in one spot, but not the other where voters are supposed to sign. “I filled out the ballot, like I was told to do. I was instructed to only fill out one box. And I guess that was not enough,” she said. The campaign has challenged thousands of provisional ballots in several majority-Democrat counties, including in Northampton, Montgomery, Chester and Allegheny. That’s in addition to its unresolved lawsuits in courts across the commonwealth. Plus, the petition before the U.S. Supreme Court initiated by Pennsylvania Republicans — which the Trump campaign has since joined — could invalidate about 10,000 ballots that arrived after polls closed on election night and before 5 p.m. on Nov. 6.

Full Article: Trump campaign presses election cases in Pennsylvania as attorneys abandon key claims, courts deny legal challenges – WHYY

Pennsylvania: 2nd Trump lawyer asks to pull out of case challenging election | Alex Hosenball/ABC

A second lawyer who was helping lead President Donald Trump’s effort to contest the outcome of the 2020 election has asked to step aside, according to a new federal court filing. Republican attorney Linda A. Kerns submitted papers with the U.S. District Court Monday saying she had “reached a mutual agreement that Plaintiffs will be best served” if she withdrew. She was joined in the motion by two other attorneys — colleagues who only recently signed on to the case with her. Kerns is a veteran of election law battles in Pennsylvania and has written publicly about her desire to see voter ID laws passed to prevent election fraud. She had served as the primary attorney on the central Trump campaign lawsuit in Pennsylvania challenging the election’s outcome. It is not clear why she has asked to step aside. Over the weekend, the Trump campaign asked the court to sanction lawyers at a firm helping defend the state in the case, saying someone from the firm left a harassing message on Kerns’ voicemail. Lawyers from Ohio firm of Porter Wright Morris & Arthur recently asked to withdraw from the federal lawsuit the Trump campaign filed in Pennsylvania to challenge the election results there.

Full Article: 2nd Trump lawyer asks to pull out of case challenging Pennsylvania election – ABC News

Pennsylvania: Trump campaign jettisons major parts of its legal challenge against election results | Jon Swaine and Elise Viebeck/The Washington Post

President Trump’s campaign on Sunday scrapped a major part of its federal lawsuit challenging the election results in Pennsylvania. Trump’s attorneys filed a revised version of the lawsuit, removing allegations that election officials violated the Trump campaign’s constitutional rights by limiting the ability of their observers to watch votes being counted. Trump and Rudolph W. Giuliani, his personal attorney, have said repeatedly that more than 600,000 votes in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh should be invalidated because of this issue. Trump’s pared-down lawsuit now focuses on allegations that Republicans were illegally disadvantaged because some Democratic-leaning counties allowed voters to fix errors on their mail ballots. Counties have said this affected only a small number of votes. Cliff Levine, an attorney representing the Democratic Party in the case, said on Sunday evening that Trump’s move meant his lawsuit could not possibly change the result. “Now you’re only talking about a handful of ballots,” Levine said. “They would have absolutely no impact on the total count or on Joe Biden’s win over Donald Trump.”

Full Article: Trump campaign jettisons major parts of its legal challenge against Pennsylvania’s election results – The Washington Post

Pennsylvania secretary of state will not order a recount | Tal Axelrod/The Hill

Pennsylvania’s top elections official confirmed Friday she will not be ordering a recount or recanvass of her state’s election results as Republicans rail against officials there over groundless voter fraud claims. Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar (D) said the races for president, state attorney general, auditor general and state treasurer will not face recounts or recanvasses after unofficial returns submitted by the state’s counties showed no statewide candidate lost by less 0.5 percent, the margin at which such recourses would be triggered. “We are extremely grateful to all 67 counties who have been working overtime and putting in an extraordinary effort to count every vote, with so far more than 6.8 million votes having been counted,” Boockvar said in a statement. “The counties continue to adjudicate and count the approximately 100,000 provisional ballots issued to voters at the polls on Election Day, as well as the more than 28,000 military and overseas ballots that were cast in this election.” With ballots still being cast, Biden currently holds a nearly 60,000-vote lead in the state, a margin that has mushroomed  since the state was called for him last weekend and could grow more.

Full Article: Pennsylvania secretary of state will not order a recount | TheHill

Pennsylvania: As DOJ probes election, Republicans’ pursuit of voter fraud hits hurdle — a lack of evidence | Daniel Moore/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Peters, said he had not yet seen evidence of election fraud, yet backed the U.S. Department of Justice’s announcement this week it would probe any allegations of voting irregularities in states President Donald Trump lost to former Vice President Joe Biden in the 2020 election. “If I’m looking at this through a lens of someone who used to be a magisterial district judge, the evidence is not there yet,” Mr. Reschenthaler acknowledged in an interview Tuesday. “But it’s also premature to predetermine the outcome.” The comments by Mr. Reschenthaler — who sits on the House Judiciary Committee and is a member of the House Republican leadership circle — are another sign of Pennsylvania Republicans straddling the line between backing the president’s unsubstantiated claims of a victory while also ignoring Mr. Biden’s win. Mr. Reschenthaler — who last week won a second term in Pennsylvania’s 14th Congressional District by about 30 percentage points — compared the current moment to the aftermath of the 2000 election, in which the outcome was not known for several weeks after Election Day.

Full Article: As DOJ probes election, Republicans’ pursuit of voter fraud hits hurdle — a lack of evidence | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Pennsylvania appellate court sides with Trump in fight over ID deadlines for voters, tossing small number of ballots | Jeremy Roebuck/Philadelphia Inquirer

A Pennsylvania appellate court handed President Donald Trump’s campaign a minor victory Thursday, barring counties from including in their final vote tallies a small pool of mail ballots from people who had failed to provide required ID by a Monday deadline. In a two-page order, a Commonwealth Court judge struck down a decision by the Wolf administration to give voters more time, post-election, to fulfill the ID requirement. Though state law only requires first-time voters to show ID at the polls, all voters who applied to vote by mail had to be validated their identification against state records by Nov. 9. Two days before the election, Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar pushed that date back by three days, citing a court decision earlier this year that allowed late-arriving mail ballots to be counted as long as they had been mailed by Nov. 3 and received within three days of that date. But it was unclear just how many ballots statewide would now be thrown out. The number is likely to be vanishingly small compared to the larger pools of votes Republicans are seeking to have tossed in other ongoing court fights across the state.

Full Article: Pa. appellate court sides with Trump in fight over ID deadlines for voters, tossing small number of ballots

Pennsylvania: Trump’s campaign is challenging mail and provisional ballots at record rates in Philadelphia and its suburbs | Jeremy Roebuck and William Bender/Philadelphia Inquirer

Even as President Donald Trump’s campaign is waging a well-publicized legal war on the broad rules governing the presidential election in Pennsylvania, its lawyers are engaging in lower-profile but no less important, county-by-county trench battles to disqualify individual votes in Philadelphia and its suburbs over technicalities. In hearings before county Boards of Elections and Common Pleas Court judges, campaign attorneys have pushed for several thousand mail votes to be cast aside due to voter mistakes like failing to date the envelope. Meanwhile, they are pursuing record numbers of challenges to “provisional” ballots, in some cases for grounds as small as the name of the county being misspelled. But just as with the more sweeping lawsuits that Trump has filed in state and federal courts across the state seeking to cast doubt on the overall integrity of the electoral system, few of these county-level skirmishes have anything to do with the allegations of widespread and deliberate voter fraud that Trump and his allies have pushed without evidence for days. Instead, their filings ask courts and county boards to disenfranchise potentially thousands of legitimate voters in Philadelphia and its suburbs over procedural errors made when filing their ballots.

Full Article: rump’s campaign is challenging mail and provisional ballots at record rates in Philly and its suburbs

Pennsylvania GOP lawmakers to probe unverified fraud claims in election they largely won | by Cynthia Fernandez and Marie Albiges/Philadelphia Inquirer

As President Donald Trump continues to question the integrity of Pennsylvania’s election while repeating unverified claims of voter fraud, state Republicans are once again seeking greater powers to investigate the voting process. Roughly two dozen House and Senate lawmakers on Tuesday called for the creation of an investigatory committee with subpoena power to conduct an immediate audit, saying they had fielded widespread doubts about the fairness of the Nov. 3 presidential election. House Republicans championed a similar proposal before the election but abandoned it after Democrats raised concerns it would be weaponized to impound ballots, interrogate election officials, and delay the certification of Pennsylvania’s election results. At the state Capitol, Rep. Dawn Keefer (R., York) said the assembled lawmakers’ offices had been “overwhelmed with calls and emails and other messages from constituents who are confused and outraged by the circumstances surrounding this election.” … Pennsylvania already has safeguards in place to ensure the accuracy of election results, experts told Spotlight PA and Votebeat. In addition to routine reviews in each county required by law, the state has started to pilot “risk-limiting” audits, a process that verifies whether a sample of paper ballots matches results captured electronically by voting machines.

Full Article: Pa. GOP lawmakers to probe unverified fraud claims in election they largely won

Pennsylvania: Postal worker admits fabricating ballot tampering claims, officials say | Shawn Boburg and Jacob Bogage/The Washington Post

A Pennsylvania postal worker whose claims have been cited by top Republicans as potential evidence of widespread voting irregularities admitted to U.S. Postal Service investigators that he fabricated the allegations, according to three officials briefed on the investigation and a statement from a House congressional committee. Richard Hopkins’s claim that a postmaster in Erie, Pa., instructed postal workers to backdate ballots mailed after Election Day was cited by Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) in a letter to the Justice Department calling for a federal investigation. Attorney General William P. Barr subsequently authorized federal prosecutors to open probes into credible allegations of voting irregularities and fraud before results are certified, a reversal of long-standing Justice Department policy. But on Monday, Hopkins, 32, told investigators from the U.S. Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General that the allegations were not true, and he signed an affidavit recanting his claims, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee tweeted late Tuesday that the “whistleblower completely RECANTED.”

Full Article: Postal worker admits fabricating Pennsylvania ballot tampering claims, officials say – The Washington Post

Pennsylvania: Trump campaign moves to bar state from certifying election results in new lawsuit | Jeremy Roebuck/Philadelphia Inquirer

President Donald Trump’s campaign launched a new legal effort Monday aimed at stopping the certification of election results in Pennsylvania and potentially invalidating thousands of votes cast by mail statewide. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Harrisburg, accuses state and county officials of grossly mismanaging the process of voting by mail and shrouding the tabulation of mail ballots in secrecy by denying Republican monitors sufficient access to inspect them as they were being counted. Though many of its claims have already been presented and litigated in courts across the state — many which ruled against the president’s campaign — the new 86-page filing presented GOP lawyers’ most comprehensive case yet in attempting to undermine public confidence in Pennsylvania’s election results. “The very officials charged with ensuring the integrity of the election in Pennsylvania have so mismanaged the election process that no one — not the voters and not President Trump’s campaign — can have any faith that their most basic rights under the U.S. Constitution are being protected,” wrote attorneys Ronald L. Hicks Jr. and Carolyn B. McGee, of Pittsburgh, and Linda Kerns, of Philadelphia. “Nothing less than the integrity of the 2020 presidential is at stake in this action.”

Full Article: Trump campaign moves to bar Pennsylvania from certifying election results in new lawsuit

Pennsylvania: Philadelphia elections officials get death threats amid Trump election attacks | Jonathan Lai/Philadelphia Inquirer

“Hey, how are you? You know what happens to corrupt Democrat politicians and election officials who support Black Lives Matter and who use voter fraud and voter suppression, voter intimidation and election tampering? You know what happens?” a man said, according to a recording of the call. “They learn first hand, the hard way, why the Second Amendment exists. We are a thousand steps ahead of you motherf—, and you’re walking right into the lion’s den.” It was an unsettling reminder of how heated — and dangerous — American politics have become. As officials prepared for the possibility of violence and civil unrest following Election Day, they worried about the city commissioners, the three elected officials who run Philadelphia’s elections, along with their staffs. Police performed threat assessments of the commissioners’ homes ahead of Election Day and planned strict security for the Pennsylvania Convention Center, where ballots would be counted and the commissioners and their staff would spend every hour of the day. “We are working around the clock in a location that probably has the best security and is the safest place in the entire City of Philadelphia,” Al Schmidt, the lone Republican of the three commissioners, recalled of the last week in an interview Monday. “We have the police department, we have the sheriff’s office, and we have private security.” Outside, tensions were rising, inflamed by President Donald Trump’s false attacks on the state’s electoral process and the sense that Pennsylvania — and Philadelphia — would play a key role in determining the presidency. As legal and political fights escalated, so did the vitriol: a torrent of death threats, harassment, and abuse, aimed at the city’s elections administrators.

Full Article: Philadelphia elections officials get death threats amid Trump election attacks

Pennsylvania: Upward of 100,000 provisional ballots could further delay a winner being named | Tom Lisi/The Philadelphia Inquirer

Those across the nation eager for a winner to be declared in Pennsylvania might have to wait a little longer because of a flood of provisional ballots, most of which are only now being counted in a process that takes a lot more time than tallying in-person or mail votes.As of Friday morning, 56 of the state’s 67 counties reported about 85,000 provisional ballots cast based on only a partial count, a Pennsylvania Department of State spokesperson said. House Speaker Bryan Cutler told reporters Friday he’s told the number could top 100,000.Provisional ballots are cast when a voter’s eligibility is in question. And so far, 2020 looks like it might be a record year, owing mostly to the state’s expansion of no-excuse mail voting. Any voter who requested a mail ballot but did not receive it — or who forgot or lost their ballot or envelopes — could still vote at the polls on Election Day using a provisional ballot. There were also reports on Election Day that some voters were told to cast a provisional ballot even if they brought their entire mail ballot to the polls, which should have allowed them to vote in person. Usually, county officials do not review provisional ballots until after in-person, mail, and absentee ballots are counted. That’s why many counties did not begin until after 5 p.m. Friday, the deadline to accept mail ballots sent by Election Day. Late-arriving mail ballots are being segregated because they are subject to a pending U.S. Supreme Court case.

Full Article: Upward of 100,000 provisional ballots in Pa. could further delay a winner being named

Pennsylvania: Republican Philadelphia official responsible for vote counting says office getting death threats | Dominick Mastrangelo/The Hill

The Republican city commissioner in Philadelphia whose office is responsible for counting votes in the city, said his staff has been receiving death threats since the count began there last week. “From the inside looking out, it all feels very deranged,” Al Schmidt said during an interview that aired Sunday on CBS News’ 60 minutes. “At the end of the day, we are counting eligible votes, cast by voters. The controversy surrounding it, is something I don’t understand.” Schmidt said critics of his office have been “coming up with all sorts of crazy stuff” about the integrity of the city’s election systems and casting doubt on the impartiality of vote counters. President Trump opened up a sizable lead on projected winner Joe Biden in Pennsylvania, which does not allowed mail-in ballots to be counted before Election Day, on Tuesday evening. But a slew of mail-in votes counted in subsequent days, mostly in the Philadelphia and Pittsburg areas, swung the state toward Biden, and the former Vice President eclipsed the president’s lead early Friday morning.

Full Article: Republican Philadelphia official responsible for vote counting says office getting death threats | TheHill

Pennsylvania: Trump legal team vows to fight on, starting with fresh lawsuit Monday | Craig R. McCoy and Jamie Martines/The Philadelphia Inquirer

Lawsuits contesting Joe Biden’s win of the presidency, starting with a federal suit to be filed Monday alleging that Philadelphia and Pittsburgh were awash in vote fraud. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, elaborated on the pending suits in an interview on Fox News in which he leveled allegations that, in several cases, the GOP had already argued without success in previous court challenges. However, the Trump legal team did cite at least one case from Pennsylvania in which it appears the vote of a dead woman from the Pittsburgh area was received and marked as “recorded” by election officials. In his Sunday remarks, Giuliani contended the suits could reverse the electionoutcome, at least in Pennsylvania. “We have enough to change Pennsylvania,” he said. “The Pennsylvania election was a disaster.” Democratic lawyers have fought back against GOP lawsuits ever since Tuesday’s election. They have dismissed the challenges as fact-free attacks on what turned out to be a fairly routine election process. “There’s no there there,” Adam Bonin, a lawyer for Democrats who was among the vote-counting observers in Philadelphia for his party, said Sunday.

Full Article: Trump legal team vows to fight on, starting with fresh lawsuit Monday in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania elections officials tune out the noise and count mail ballots | Jonathan Lai and Jessica Calefati/The Philadelphia Inquirer

Outside a former metalworks warehouse on the north side of the city, it’s around-the-clock news coverage, speculation, misinformation, litigation, and anxiety about Pennsylvania’s election results. Inside, it’s all about the count. A sea of black totes containing already scanned ballots spreads across one side of the warehouse, under the guard of several armed county law…

Pennsylvania: Bucks County judge dismisses Trump suit against Bucks Board of Elections | Peg Quann/Bucks County Courier Times

The Trump campaign lost a legal challenge that if successful would have prohibited political observers from notifying Bucks County voters that their mail-in ballots were being challenged on Election Day. The observers were taking the names of those voters and their addresses and notifying them of the challenge in hopes that they would go to the polls and vote with a provisional ballot, which would be counted if their mail-in ballots were rejected. These mail-in ballots, officials said, were challenged due to voters not using the secrecy envelope or other defects. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday, was ultimately denied and dismissed by county Judge Gary Gilman. “We were successful. The case was thrown out and the county’s practices continued through the day,” County Solicitor Joseph Khan said Wednesday during the county commissioners meeting.

Full Article: Bucks judge dismisses Trump suit against Bucks Board of Elections

Pennsylvania: Trump tries to stop ballot count | Michael Finnegan/Los Angeles Times

President Trump sought Wednesday to block Pennsylvania from counting more than 1 million ballots cast by mail in Tuesday’s election as the tabulation narrowed his lead over Democratic challenger Joe Biden. Trump’s extraordinary attack on the voting system came in a broad legal assault on ballot counting across a handful of toss-up states that will decide the presidential election. The Republican president was more than 600,000 votes ahead of Biden early Wednesday in Pennsylvania, but by the end of the day that margin had shrunk to fewer than 140,000 votes. Biden’s lopsided victory in the mail ballots counted by Wednesday, 77% to 22%, put the former vice president on track to erase Trump’s lead entirely by the time the count of the remaining 763,000 mail ballots was complete. Most were cast in counties that Trump lost in 2016. Mail ballots take extra time to process and count so each voter’s eligibility can be verified.

Full Article: Trump tries to stop Pennsylvania ballot count in election – Los Angeles Times

Pennsylvania: GOP effort to block ‘cured’ ballots gets chilly reception from judge | Katherine Landergan and Josh Gerstein/Politico

A federal judge gave a skeptical reception Wednesday to a Republican lawsuit seeking to throw out votes in a Pennsylvania county that contacted some voters to give them an opportunity to fix — or “cure” — problems with their absentee ballots. During a morning hearing in Philadelphia, U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Savage said he was dubious of arguments from a lawyer for GOP congressional candidate Kathy Barnette, who argued that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had concluded that the law prohibits counties from allowing voters who erred in completing or packaging their mail-in ballots to correct those mistakes. “I’m not sure about that,” said Savage, an appointee of President George W. Bush. “Is that exactly what was said or is what was said was that there is no mandatory requirement that the election board do that?….Wasn’t the legislative intent of the statute we are talking about to franchise, not disenfranchise, voters?” “This isn’t disenfranchising voters,” insisted Thomas Breth, an attorney for Barnette. “They can’t do this unless the election code provides them the authority to do this.” But Savage chafed at the lawyer’s suggestion that a miscast absentee vote blocked a voter from fixing that ballot or casting a provisional ballot at the polls. “It counts as your vote, but your vote is not counted,” the judge said quizzically.

Full Article: GOP effort to block ‘cured’ Pennsylvania ballots gets chilly reception from judge – POLITICO

Philadelphia’s Ballot-Counting Livestream Is the Only Thing Worth Watching Today | Brian Barrett/WIRED

It is possible that watching hours of inconclusive election results deep into the night has poisoned your brain. It happens! Fortunately, that same vote-tallying vortex also offers an antidote: the gentle zen of the Philadelphia City Commissioners’ ballot-counting livestream. Yes, things are stressful right now, especially as President Donald Trump embraces a scorched-earth path to keeping his office. (All the more surprising given that he still has a chance of winning legitimately, without lies and spurious lawsuits.) But no matter your political preference, you should be able to find some comfort in this live view of Philly’s election workers moving ballots through the system. And get comfortable: As of 4 am East Coast time on Wednesday, the state had at least 1.4 million ballots still to be counted, with hundreds of thousands of those in Philadelphia alone. As long as they were postmarked by November 3, incoming ballots can continue to be processed through Friday. For all the conspiratorial talk about rigged elections—there’s no evidence of that, and it would be easy to spot if there were—there’s something reassuring about watching the process unfold. There’s no grifting here, no ballots materializing out of thin air or being dumped into a river. There’s no comment section, no sound. There’s just the plodding, methodical machinations of democracy at work. In fact, closer observation reveals almost every step of how a ballot becomes a vote, although an apparent shift system means that not every gear is turning at the same time.

Full Article: Philly’s Ballot-Counting Livestream Is the Only Thing Worth Watching Today | WIRED

Pennsylvania: GOP Sues To Throw Out Corrected Mail-In Ballots | Alison Durkee/Forbes

A Republican congressional candidate in Pennsylvania filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday against election officials in Montgomery County over officials’ decision to let voters correct their mail-in ballots if they have obvious deficiencies, asking the court to throw out the “cured” ballots and potentially threatening mail-in ballots in an essential battleground state. Kathy Barnette, who’s running to represent Pennsylvania’s 4th Congressional District in the House, and voter Clay D. Breece allege that Montgomery County officials’ decision to inspect sealed ballots for any obvious defects—like “naked ballots” that lack a secrecy envelope or not signing the outside of the envelope—ahead of Election Day violates Pennsylvania’s ban on processing and counting ballots before 7:00 a.m. on Election Day. Pennsylvania left it up to counties to determine how or if to contact voters to correct their mail-in ballots, which the Philadelphia Inquirer previously reported resulted in a “patchwork of policies” across the state regarding how and whether voters will be contacted to correct their ballots.

Full Article: GOP Sues To Throw Out Corrected Mail-In Ballots In Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania voters who plan to turn over mail ballots and vote in-person add to concerns about Election Day waits | Ellie Silverman/Philadelphia Inquirer

Voting by mail is supposed to help Pennsylvanians like Suzanne Matthiessen, a 64-year-old with asthma, stay safe during the coronavirus pandemic. But, since receiving her ballot in early October, she has left it on her desk, unopened.She plans to turn over that ballot to election officials at the polls Tuesday and vote in person. She said she is worried about making sure her vote counts in a critical swing state. “Just watching what was happening, what Trump was saying, I thought ‘I don’t want to mess around with this. I want my vote to count on Election Day,’ ” said Matthiessen, a registered Independent in Mercer County, one of the handful of counties in Pennsylvania that have said they won’t begin counting mail ballots until Wednesday. “Knowing it is going to be counted that day, that is the most important thing.” Other Pennsylvanians have made similar decisions, at first fearful their vote would not arrive on time if mailed, and now nervous President Donald Trump will declare victory before all the votes are counted. But Pennsylvania officials warn that people trading in their mail ballots to vote on a machine could lengthen the lines and the amount of time it takes to cast votes. “The injury is that you’re potentially slowing down voting,” Al Schmidt, a Republican and one of three city commissioners who run Philadelphia elections told The Inquirer two weeks ago. These voters are “adding to the line, and to the work the election boards need to do to get voters voting.”

Full Article: Pa. voters with mail ballots who vote in person add to Election Day 2020 poll lines

Pennsylvania: ‘It’s Just Crazy’: Mail Voting and the Anxiety That Followed | Trip Gabriel/The New York Times

“Hello, Elections.” “Hello, Elections.” “Hello, Elections.” The rapid-fire calls were pouring in to Marybeth Kuznik, the one-woman Elections Department of Armstrong County, a few days before Election Day. “This is crazy,” she told an anxious caller. “Crazy, crazy, crazy. It’s a good thing because everybody should vote,” she added, “but it’s just crazy.” Armstrong County, northeast of Pittsburgh, is one of Pennsylvania’s smaller counties with 44,829 registered voters. But it is a microcosm of the high tension, confusion and deep uncertainty that have accompanied the broad expansion of mail-in voting this year, during an election of passionate intensity. With all Pennsylvania voters eligible for the first time to vote by mail, more than three million ballots were requested statewide — nearly half the total turnout from 2016. One in five voters in Armstrong County requested a mail-in ballot. A complicated two-envelope ballot, uncertainty over the reliability of the Postal Service and a glitchy online system for tracking returned votes have caused Ms. Kuznik to be bombarded by callers. And, though to a lesser extent, she has also been visited by a stream of walk-ins at her small second-floor office in the county administration building, where an American flag was stuck into a dying plant above her desk. “All righty, let’s look you up, see what’s going on,” she told voters who called seeking assistance. “Gotcha,” she said whenever she found a voter’s name in her Dell computer. The state-run portal intended to track mail ballots was unreliable, Ms. Kuznik said. By using a database available only to election officials, she was able to reassure voters about the status of a ballot — in nearly all cases, it had been received.

Full Article: ‘It’s Just Crazy’ in Pennsylvania: Mail Voting and the Anxiety That Followed – The New York Times

Pennsylvania: Harassment, anger, and misinformation plague county officials as they struggle to keep 2020 election on track | Marie Albiges, Tom Lisi, and Angela Couloumbis/WHYY

On a recent weekday, Forrest Lehman was struggling to run two elections simultaneously — one in person and one by mail. Hundreds of people stood in line to request a ballot at the Lycoming County elections office, so they could vote right there and hand it back. Nearby, 800 mail ballot applications sat untouched, waiting to be processed so the county could send ballots to voters. Meanwhile, the phone kept ringing, with callers asking questions the likes of which Lehman had never heard before. “We can’t get anything done,” said Lehman, the county’s director of elections. “People are just so nasty, ugly, distrustful, anxious, and we’re getting the brunt of all that,” he said. County election officials across the state say drastic changes to Pennsylvania’s voting laws, a global pandemic, and misinformation surrounding a high-stakes presidential election are all contributing to the high stress they’re feeling as they work overtime leading up to Nov. 3.

Full Article: Harassment, anger, and misinformation plague Pa. county officials as they struggle to keep 2020 election on track – WHYY

Pennsylvania: Seven counties will wait until after Election Day to process mail-in ballots | Matt Wargo and Maura Barrett/NBC

Seven out of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties will wait to count mail-in ballots until the day after the election, according to local officials, potentially delaying when media organizations will be able to project a winner in the state. Pennsylvania allows for counties to begin processing mail-in ballots the morning of Election Day, but officials in Beaver, Cumberland, Franklin, Greene, Juniata, Mercer and Montour — all counties which voted for Donald Trump in 2016 — said that concerns over staffing and resources led them to delay when they will count mail ballots. It is unclear what impact this could have on the timing of the results. The counties range in population size, but roughly a combined 150,000 voters in these areas have requested mail-in ballots according to state data. Trump won Pennsylvania by a little more than 44,000 votes in 2016 and with 20 Electoral College votes, the state could determine the winner of this year’s election. Polls have consistently shown Joe Biden leading Trump in the state by a few percentage points. Forest County, where Trump also won, said they were considering waiting to count their mail-in ballots, too, depending on what the workload on Election Day looked like. Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said she is working to have conversations with these counties, urging them to start counting on Tuesday. “Even if you could only do part [of the process], to get started as early as humanly possible on Election Day matters for every single county of any size,” Boockvar told reporters on Friday.

Full Article: Seven Pennsylvania counties will wait until after Election Day to process mail-in ballots

Pennsylvania struggles with how — or if — to help voters fix their mail ballots | Jonathan Lai/The Philadelphia Inquirer

Officials across Pennsylvania are trying to help voters fix mail ballots that would otherwise be disqualified because of technical mistakes in completing them, creating a patchwork of policies around how — or even whether — people are notified and given a chance to make their votes count. Some counties are marking those ballots as received, the same as any other ballot, which gives voters no indication there’s a problem. Some are marking them as canceled, as the state says to do, which sends voters warning emails and updates the online ballot status tool but doesn’t notify voters without email addresses on file. Still others try to reach voters directly, including by mail, phone, or email — and at least one county mails the actual flawed ballots back to voters. The Pennsylvania Department of State, which oversees elections, provided some direction Sunday, telling counties to mark ballots as canceled if they have clear flaws, such as missing voters’ signatures, or are “naked ballots” without the required inner secrecy envelopes. Those ballots have to be rejected when votes are counted beginning on Election Day.

Source: Pennsylvania struggles with how — or if — to help voters fix their mail ballots

Pennsylvania elections chief urges counties to begin counting mail-in ballots early Tuesday morning | Kyle Cheney/Politico

Pennsylvania’s elections chief pleaded with county leaders Friday to make sure they start counting mail-in ballots the morning of Election Day, rather than waiting until the next day to begin the crucial tally. “The outcome of Tuesday’s election could well depend on Pennsylvania. It is vitally important that the more than 3 million ballots cast by mail here be counted as soon as possible,” Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said in a statement. “The country will be looking to Pennsylvania for accurate and timely results.” Her comments come as President Donald Trump has continued to question the need for votes to be counted after Nov. 3, despite the fact that it’s been commonplace in all presidential elections. This year, in particular, as voters leaned more heavily on mail-in ballots amid the coronavirus pandemic, the prospect of vote-counting that continues days or even weeks after Election Day has grown. Pennsylvania has already agreed to segregate any mail-in ballots that arrive after the polls close on Election Day, a nod to lingering legal questions about whether those ballots will be permitted to be counted. Boockvar’s comments come amid plans by some Pennsylvania counties to postpone counting of any mail-in ballots — whether they arrive before the polls close or after — until late Tuesday or early Wednesday.

Full Article: Pa. elections chief urges counties to begin counting mail-in ballots early Tuesday morning – POLITICO