How a post-election crisis was manufactured in Pennsylvania

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:
Marshall Cohen
@MarshallCohen
NEW: How a post-election crisis was manufactured in Pennsylvania, where Republicans refused to let local officials process mail ballots before Election Day. This gave Trump a huge "red mirage" that he used to falsely claim victory and spread disinformation https://cnn.com/2020/11/14/politics/pennsylvania-election-crisis/index.html…
Image

[liberal N proud]

1. trump was going to make Pennsylvania an issue long before November 3rd

When he found out he was down in the polls with no chance at recovery, he decided to discredit the election and mainly discredit Pennsylvania.

All the campaign visits to the state were part of the plan of deception.

[Freddie]

2. It's a little more complicated

Prior to this year the only way to vote by mail in PA was “absentee ballot” where you had to have a reason (out of town, etc.) There were never all that many of them so the law was to count them on Election Day.
This is the first year we had “no excuses” mail-in voting, which started with the May primary. This proved to be a lot more popular than they thought. Of course the vast majority of people voting in the primary were Democrats. If you got a mail ballot for the primary you had the option of having one automatically sent to you for the general, which most people signed up for. Drop boxes (and regular mail) were used for the primary. No problem at all.
Anticipating (correctly) HUGE #s of mail-in ballots for the general, Gov Wolf asked that the law be changed to allow processing before Election Day. Republicans said fine - if we eliminated the drop boxes. This was when it was becoming obvious that Trump was having the mail slowed. Gov Wolf said no deal. So the drop boxes stayed, as well as the ridiculous counting rule.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

3. Thanks for that info. I was unaware of the mail vs dropbox battle.

[crickets]

4. Thanks for the background info.

I didn't realize it was an 'either/or' for the drop boxes vs early processing. Good to know, and good choice on Gov Wolf's part to keep the drop boxes. Obviously, they got a lot of use.

[DeminPennswoods]

5. Fact is, the Rs and Gov Wolf reached a compromise

that EXPANDED voting in Pennsylvania by allowing no excuse absentee ballot voting in return for elimination of the straight party selection option on the ballot.

Not allowing the pre-canvassing (everything but counting) was just the Rs being petty jag-offs.