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 enforcement officers. On the other side of the building, 30 workers scan ballots nonstop, processing about 13,000 an hour. And watching over them from inside a large rectangular pen are representatives of both campaigns. “I know it’s tough for people to wait and people are frustrated by the wait,” said Allegheny County Solicitor Andy Szefi. “I would ask that people be patient. We knew going into this process that it wasn’t going to be done yesterday or today because of that extension, and that’s just where we are now. We’re just living in the reality that we knew was coming.” In warehouses and offices all across Pennsylvania on Wednesday, workers counted mail ballot after mail ballot, steadily processing and counting them as the vote totals ticked ever higher and higher. Despite all the attention to the state’s results — still too early to call for the presidential race as of late in the evening — county elections officials said they were just trying to do their jobs.

Full Article: Pennsylvania elections officials tune out the noise and count mail ballots

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

Pennsylvania: Trump’s election day director is waging war on voting in Philadelphia | Nick Fiorellini/The Guardian

For decades before he worked for the president, Donald Trump’s director of election day operations has called out and made allegations of voter fraud by the Democratic party, building a lucrative career in the process. His name is Mike Roman, and this year he’s claiming an increase in mail ballots because of the coronavirus pandemic will allow Democrats to cheat and steal the election, despite little evidence. Roman is best known for promoting a video of apparent voter intimidation by the New Black Panthers outside a polling place in his home town of Philadelphia in 2008. Filed weeks before George W Bush left office, the justice department investigated the incident that was cited as evidence of Democrats seeking to influence the election. The case was later dropped because it lacked evidence. In the decade after, Roman stayed busy. He wrote about alleged election fraud for conservative websites like Breitbart News. He managed a research unit for the Koch network, did consulting work for various Republicans and oversaw poll watching for Trump’s 2016 campaign. These days he’s focused on peddling the same myth in his hometown of Philadelphia, a key city in the battleground of Pennsylvania that could determine the outcome of the election. Earlier this year, Roman visited battleground states and worked with local candidates and parties to recruit volunteers to monitor election sites. The Trump campaign hasn’t released information about the number of volunteer observers it has recruited in each state but claims it has established a 50,000-plus army of volunteers across an array of swing states.

Full Article: Trump's election day director is waging war on voting in Philadelphia | US news | The Guardian

Pennsylvania: Supreme Court Won’t Speed a Do-Over on Ballot Deadlines | Adam Liptak/The New York Times

The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused a plea from Pennsylvania Republicans to put their request to halt a three-day extension of the deadline for receiving absentee ballots on an extraordinarily fast track. The move meant that the court would not consider the case, which could have yielded a major ruling on voting procedure, until after Election Day. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who joined the court on Tuesday and who might have broken an earlier deadlock in the case, did not cast a vote. A court spokeswoman said Justice Barrett “did not participate in the consideration of this motion because of the need for a prompt resolution of it and because she has not had time to fully review the parties’ filings.”The court’s brief order gave no reasons for declining to expedite consideration of the case. In a separate statement, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch, said the court may still consider the case after the election.

Full Article: Supreme Court Won’t Speed a Do-Over on Pennsylvania’s Ballot Deadlines - The New York Times

 

Pennsylvania: GOP files second request for Supreme Court to block mail-in ballot extension | John Kruzel/The Hill

Pennsylvania Republicans have returned to the Supreme Court in another effort to roll back the state’s mail-in ballot extension, filing their second such attempt just ahead of the imminent confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett and days after the court deadlocked on the issue. The Pennsylvania GOP asked the justices on Friday night to fast-track a formal review of a major ruling by the state Supreme Court, which held that mailed ballots sent by Election Day and received up to three days later must be counted. The Keystone State is a crucial battleground in the 2020 election after President Trump won it in 2016 by fewer than 45,000 votes. Both Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden campaigned in Pennsylvania on Monday. If successful, the GOP’s long-shot bid could disenfranchise a number of mail-in voters, with the harm likely to fall disproportionately on Biden supporters, who are considered about twice as likely as Trump backers to vote by mail. Republicans' latest request comes less than a week after the Supreme Court left intact Pennsylvania’s mail-ballot extension with a 4-4 deadlock. The tie vote last Monday broke largely along ideological lines, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining the court’s three liberals in denying the GOP’s request to halt the state court ruling, while the court’s four most conservative justices indicated they would have granted it.

Pennsylvania Supreme Court rules that counties cannot reject mail ballots because of mismatched signatures | Angela Couloumbis/The Philadelphia Inquirer

Counties cannot reject mail-in and absentee ballots if a voter’s signature on the outer envelope does not match what’s on file, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled Friday, making drawn-out challenges on Election Day less likely.In a 7-0 decision, the high court said there are no provisions in the state’s election code that specifically require counties to match voters' signatures. And, the court noted, in writing the law, the legislature could have explicitly mandated signature matching but did not. “We decline to read a signature comparison requirement into the plain and unambiguous language of the election code,” the justices wrote in their decision.Friday’s ruling stemmed from a request earlier this month from Pennsylvania’s top election official, Kathy Boockvar, to bar county election officials from rejecting mail-in ballots solely on the basis of perceived differences in a voter’s signature. The decision is the latest in a crush of litigation in the weeks leading up to the Nov. 3 election, as Republicans and Democrats wage pitched battles over gray areas in Pennsylvania’s year-old law that greatly expanded the ability to vote by mail.

Pennsylvania: Talks collapse on a deal to let counties open mail ballots before Election Day | Cynthia Fernandez and Jonathan Lai/Philadelphia Inquirer

Negotiations between the Republican-led legislature and Gov. Tom Wolf to let counties begin opening mail ballots in Pennsylvania before Election Day appeared to collapse Wednesday, setting up a potential nightmare scenario that some fear could leave the state counting millions of ballots for days after Nov. 3.The Democratic governor and legislative leaders had been negotiating behind closed doors as recently as Tuesday to change the election code after months of inaction. But the General Assembly adjourned Wednesday and is not scheduled to reconvene until Nov. 10, a week after the election. In adjourning, Republicans turned away pleas from county elections officials across the state, who said allowing them to open ballots before Election Day would reduce the staffing strain and administrative headaches on top of whatever issues they’re dealing with during in-person voting. Without a deal, the days-long process of counting mail ballots can’t begin until 7 a.m. on Election Day, potentially leaving the results unclear for days and opening room for candidates to falsely declare victory. As the day ended, both sides were left pointing fingers.

Pennsylvania: Trump Campaign Draws Rebuke for Surveilling Philadelphia Voters | Danny Hakim and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

The Trump campaign has been videotaping Philadelphia voters while they deposit their ballots in drop boxes, leading Pennsylvania’s attorney general to warn this week that the campaign’s actions fall outside of permitted poll watching practices and could amount to illegal voter intimidation. The campaign made a formal complaint to city officials on Oct. 16, saying a campaign representative had surveilled voters depositing two or three ballots at drop boxes, instead of only their own. The campaign called the conduct “blatant violations of the Pennsylvania election code,” according to a letter from a lawyer representing the Trump campaign that was reviewed by The New York Times. The campaign included photos of three voters who it claimed were dropping off multiple ballots.“This must be stopped,” a local lawyer for the Trump campaign, Linda A. Kerns, wrote in the letter, adding that the actions “undermine the integrity of the voting process. ”Both the Trump and Biden campaigns are focused on Pennsylvania, seen as one of the most important swing states in the election and where polls show Joseph R. Biden Jr. with a seven-point lead. The Trump campaign’s aggressive strategy in Philadelphia suggests its aim is to crack down on people dropping off ballots for family members or anyone else who is not strictly authorized to do so. Ms. Kerns demanded that the names of all voters who had used a drop box in front of Philadelphia’s City Hall on Oct. 14 be turned over to the campaign, and insisted that the city station a staff member around every drop box “at all times.” She also asked for footage from municipal cameras around City Hall.But city officials rejected the assertion that the voters who had been photographed had necessarily done something improper. The city’s lawyers forwarded the campaign’s complaints to the local district attorney, but did not make a formal referral and cast doubt on the assertions. They also said they do not track which voters use which drop box.

Pennsylvania: A year ago, voting machines malfunctioned in Northhampton county. Have the problems been fixed? | Marie Albiges/Spotlight PA

On Election Day a year ago, Matthew Munsey was getting some alarming reports.Voters in Northampton County were casting their ballots for the first time on the county’s new voting machines, and things weren’t going well: The screens were responding erratically to voters' touches, and the official ballots the machines printed out were hard to read.At the end of the night, a Democratic candidate for Court of Common Pleas judge was showing zero recorded votes at some precincts, even though the candidate knew at least three people — his campaign manager and the manager’s parents — had voted for him.“I felt like this was the worst-case scenario that I had dreaded,” said Munsey, the chairperson for the county Democrats.One year later, those same voting machines will face their most consequential test yet: a highly scrutinized presidential election in a Pennsylvania county widely viewed as a national political bellwether for the race overall.In 2020, many elections experts believe as Northampton County goes, so goes the nation.

Pennsylvania: Voter confusion rattles election officials near Monday’s deadline to register | Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Elise Viebeck/The Washington Post

Elections officials in Pennsylvania are being inundated with complaints from first-time and absentee voters having difficulty registering to vote or requesting a mail ballot, fueling anxiety in the critical swing state just as the 5 p.m. Monday deadline approaches to join the voting rolls in time for the November election. College students in at least three counties in Pennsylvania who attempted to register to vote online had their applications rejected and were notified that they must provide documentation in person or by mail to meet the Monday deadline, raising concerns among voting rights advocates that an unknown number of students may not be able to register in time. Meanwhile, other voters are receiving rejection notices for their absentee ballot requests without a clear explanation. County officials said the vast majority of these rejections were due to duplicate requests. The voters had already requested a general election ballot when they were applying to vote by mail for the primary election, so they didn’t need to request one again for the fall.

Pennsylvania: Amid fears of Election Day chaos, one county prepares for anxious days after the vote | Marc Fisher/The Washington Post

In Erie County, Pa., either Joe Biden or President Trump is showing up every week now, and the anxiety level is through the roof.There’s fear of neighbors: On Election Day, self-appointed guardians armed with assault weapons plan to take up positions outside local polling places. There’s fear of outsiders: A Ku Klux Klan group from out of state recently dropped racist fliers on the driveways of some homes with Biden signs on the lawns. And there’s fear of what’s coming Nov. 3: The county sheriff doesn’t have nearly enough deputies to keep eyes on all 149 polls. In one of the most important battlegrounds in one of the most critical swing states in the 2020 presidential race, the Republican county chairman, Verel Salmon, 73, sees “passion like never before in my lifetime, for good and bad, and I started with ‘I Like Ike.’ I don’t think I’ve heard a single optimistic thing this year.”

Pennsylvania: Northampton County – ‘swing county, USA’ – prepares for unprecedented influx of ballots by mail | Mary Louise Kelly, Andrea Hsu, and Fatma Tanis/NPR

The county government cafeteria in Northampton County is a large, airy room with big windows and, for now, lunch tables separated by plexiglass. But a few months from now, on Election Day, this is where the county plans to have a couple of dozen people processing what it expects could be 100,000 mail-in ballots, nearly triple what they handled in the June 2 primary and 15 times what they handled in November 2016. The dramatic rise in mail-in ballots prompted the move of the counting operation to the cafeteria, one of many steps this swing county on the eastern edge of a battleground state is taking to prepare for this unprecedented presidential election. “We’re very supportive of it. It’s just a little more work,” says Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure Jr. “Based on our experience from the primary, we just don’t think it’s physically possible to count the potential 100,000 mail-in ballots that day.” Pennsylvania is among the handful of states that could decide the outcome of the election if it’s close. It voted twice for Barack Obama before pivoting to Donald Trump in 2016. Like many other places across the U.S., officials are anticipating a tremendous increase in the number of people voting by mail, because of changes in laws and coronavirus concerns. While there’s little evidence that mail-in ballots are insecure, they do introduce logistical and other challenges.