Pennsylvania election officials are bracing for conspiracy theories, protests
Source: CBS News
October 13, 2024 / 7:00 PM EDT
Republican Al Schmidt, Pennsylvania's top election official, has crisscrossed his state in a campaign to spread the gospel of election security, four years after former President Donald Trump disputed the ballot count. The swing state, with its 19 electoral votes, is critical to the campaigns of both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. It's also a state with a law that prevents the early processing of mail-in ballots, which dragged out the state's count in 2020.
The anticipated lag this year has election officials bracing for conspiracy theories, protests and violence. "That window of time between the polls closing and races being called, I think, has shown to be a real vulnerability, where people seeking to undermine confidence in those results if they're going to lose have really exploited," Schmidt said.
Pennsylvania's mail-in ballot process
Unlike many other states, Pennsylvania can only begin processing mail-in ballots on the morning of Election Day. It took four days to call the election in Pennsylvania in 2020. As those days passed, leaving the 2020 election results hanging in the balance, all eyes were on the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia.
Police and protesters were outside while Schmidt and his fellow members of the Board of Elections oversaw the counting of a record 375,000 mail-in ballots, most of them from Democratic voters. "When you have half of your voters vote by mail, like we did in 2020, counting those votes takes time," Schmidt said.
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pennsylvania-election-mail-in-ballot-processing-60-minutes/
As a note that in 2020, the "half that voted by mail" was due to the pandemic and a huge lack of actual "in person" polling stations around the state (including here in Philly, which were only about 1/2 of what we normally had). Since that election and pretty much every election since 2020, about 1/3rd of voters have chosen that method and the rest (2/3rds) DO vote "in person".