Pennsylvania voters, here are various unrelated things to know based on what I’m seeing/hearing:
The satellite elections offices some counties set up as temporary sites for “early voting” are still open in many of those counties for people to drop off ballots or request replacement ballots.
*But satellite offices are not polling places.*
Don’t go there to vote in person.
Trying to drop off your mail ballot? You can hand-deliver it to a county elections office (including one of the satellites) or use a drop box.
*You can’t turn in your voted mail ballot at a polling place to be counted.*
Polling places are for in-person voting only.
Yes, you’re allowed to take a ballot selfie.
In PA, electioneering is prohibited inside polling places and within 10 feet of the entrance of the room where people are voting.
PA Dept of State guidance recommends that voters should still be allowed to vote if wearing buttons, clothes, etc. in support of a candidate:
If you have a mail ballot and want to vote in person instead, you’ll need to bring the ballot and return envelope (I recommend you just bring the whole thing).
Surrender your ballot and envelope to the judge of elections (chief poll watcher), sign affidavit, then vote in person:
If you requested a mail ballot and go to your polling place without (incl. if you never received it), you’ll need use a provisional ballot, a paper ballot set aside until officials validate it.
There are a lot of mail ballots still to be counted, and they’re coming primarily from Democrats. That’s one of the reasons we expect a sizable “blue shift” in the votes.
Trump: “We’re up 690,000 votes in Pennsylvania … it’s going to be almost impossible to catch.”
The results of most of PA’s mail ballots aren’t known yet, with at least 1.44 million left to be counted or included in the totals as of 3 a.m., according to PA Dept of State data.
And those votes will almost certainly be heavily for Biden.
First of all, mail ballots in general were used much more by Democrats than Republicans. Even in most counties Trump won in 2016, Democrats outnumbered Republicans when it came to voting by mail.
Election Day like no other is finally here, a day that felt like it was always around the corner yet would never arrive.
Here’s my look at how we got here in PA, with new voting machines, new vote-by-mail system, a pandemic, and a whole lot of pressure: inquirer.com/politics/elect…
“I’m medicated this year,” Lebanon County elections director Michael Anderson told me. “I don’t know how many election directors aren’t.”
I thought he was joking. He wasn’t.
The anxiety about the election got so bad that after the primary, his doctor prescribed medication.
Anderson would be unable to stop thinking and worrying about the election, he said:
”just not being able to stop. Your brain is constantly running, especially at night. I’d wake up and think about, ‘I have to do this, I have to do that.’ And just the anxiety of it all.”
When polling places open at 7 a.m. in Pennsylvania tomorrow, there will be some amount of messiness. That always happens.
Here are three things I try to keep in mind:
1. People start lining up before polls open. That creates a line, yes, but it’s not a line bc something is wrong. And with social distancing, the line may look particularly long. Once voting starts, it takes time to go through the line and reach equilibrium.
2. There will always be a few poll workers who oversleep, or don’t show up at all, or whatever. That obviously messes with the opening of the polling place.
And poll workers never have enough training, and this year many are new. It takes a minute to hit your stride.
On the eve of Election Day, President Donald Trump is attacking Pennsylvania’s electoral system and raising the possibility of election-related violence.
Here are some facts and key context you should know about what’s going on.
First, and most important: There is absolutely no reason for election-related violence and it is dangerous and irresponsible to even suggest it as an outcome of the electoral process. If the courts say ballots should be counted, that should not lead to violence.
And of course, one way to reduce the risk of any violence relating to the election is for our elected leaders and candidates for office to urge calm, to call for peace, and to tell their supporters to wait for results and accept them when they are known.