A Chester County, PA judge yesterday dismissed the precinct recount petitions some voters had filed.

The judge doesn’t hold back in tearing up the attempt at getting hand recounts to “audit” the election. Some of the voters who filed recount petitions are poll workers. They signed off on the results — and that the law was filed.

“In short, they now claim they themselves acted fraudulently or in error. Aside from the obvious question, ‘Were you lying then or are you lying now’ …”

Whoa — this is not accurate.

Counties are able to help voters cure flawed ballots this election.

The RNC lost an attempt to block counties from curing, and the PA Supreme Court deadlocked on the appeal, automatically affirming that ruling. Ballot curing doesn’t defy the court.

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1589292087316402178

A Commonwealth Court judge denied the RNC’s attempt to immediately stop counties from curing ballots this election.

(Note: the underlying case itself, on the merits, continues to move forward, but doesn’t affect this election.) inquirer.com/politics/elect…

Philly has posted lists of voters who submitted flawed mail ballots.

• 1,830 undated ballots
• 1,092 naked ballots
• 338 wrongly dated ballots
• 145 unsigned ballots

vote.phila.gov/news/2022/11/0… The city commissioners are posting the lists as part of their ballot-curing efforts to help voters get their ballots counted if they were submitted with flaws.

Campaigns, parties, organizers, and just anyone who wants to can take a look at those lists and try to help.

The PA Dept of State emailed counties an “URGENT survey” this morning about the number of undated and incorrectly dated mail ballots they’ve received.

But it’s raised alarm with some county officials because it asks for a partisan breakdown of those ballots. The survey asks for the number of “undated Absentee & Mail-in Democratic Party ballots”, “Republican Party ballots“, and “Other Party ballots”.

It then repeats the questions for incorrectly dated ballots.

Last week, @RepGrove wrote a letter to the PA Dept of State arguing the state’s mail voting law, Act 77, is now nullified thanks to a provision that says if part of the law is overturned, the whole thing is.

He pointed to federal rulings over counting undated mail ballots. Acting PA secretary of state today responded: No, Act 77 remains in effect.

“Your specious legal theory perpetuates disinformation. I ask that you carefully consider the way that you discuss these issues in the public sphere.”

With the PA recount results being officially released soon, a quick warning that it will be very easy to use the wrong numbers and make it look like the recount changed the vote count a lot more than it actually did.

(Even the Dept of State might do this.) The recount is ordered based on unofficial results counties are required to report by 5 p.m. the Tuesday after election day.

Those results, after one week, cover the vast majority of votes — but not all, and the gap will be meaningful here.

Those will be the misleading numbers.

Running elections is different now, officials across PA said ahead of tomorrow’s Election Day.

They brace for attacks and accusations when they make mistakes. They endure continued threats, harassment, & abuse; political questioning; conspiracy theories.

inquirer.com/politics/elect… “[T]he new environment is rather than getting a call from someone else somewhere in government asking how they can help, it might be a subpoena,” said Lee Soltysiak, elections clerk in Montgomery County, which sent 16k voters incorrectly printed mail ballots this fall.

PA’s population is changing — and political power changes with it.

The new Census data help us understand electoral trends we’ve seen, PA’s shifting political geography, and maybe even some of the future.

Here’s what @JonathanTamari and I found:
inquirer.com/politics/elect… Of PA’s 67 counties, the 5 that voted 55%+ for Biden grew by 215.1K people over last decade.

The 10 that voted 55% Biden to 55% Trump grew a combined 115.8K.

The 52 counties that voted 55%+ Trump declined in population by 30.5K.

@JonathanTamari and me:
inquirer.com/politics/elect…

Here’s how Pennsylvania’s population is distributed across the state, with one dot for each person counted in the 2020 Census: A closer look at Southeastern Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia and its suburban Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties:

Here are the official Census population numbers for Pennsylvania’s 67 counties for 2010, 2020, and how they’ve changed.

Format: [2010 population] to [2020 population] (change) Adams: 101,407 to 103,852 (+2,445)
Allegheny: 1,223,348 to 1,250,578 (+27,230)
Armstrong: 68,941 to 65,558 (-3,383)
Beaver: 170,539 to 168,215 (-2,324)
Bedford: 49,762 to 47,577 (-2,185)
Berks: 411,442 to 428,849 (+17,407)
Blair: 127,089 to 122,822 (-4,267)

One reason I wanted to write about voter ID is bc of this more fundamental question:

What if impact on turnout isn’t the right way to answer a question of voting rights? How should we think about and evaluate election policies?

That’s why I needed to talk to @hakeemjefferson:

https://twitter.com/Elaijuh/status/1412380798787932162

“One of the frustrations for me as a political scientist who thinks of himself as caring deeply about causal effects [is] it bothers me that so many social scientists treat this topic as if it’s like everything else that we’ve studied,” Jefferson said.

PA State Sen. Doug Mastriano is asking three counties, including Philly, for essentially all election-related equipment and ballots as part of a “forensic investigation” into the 2020 election and 2021 primary.

@AndrewSeidman and me:
inquirer.com/politics/elect… Mastriano’s sprawling requests include stuff like all ballots; mail ballot applications; mail ballot envelopes; voting machines; ballot scanners and vote-counting equipment; ballot production equipment; poll books; computer logs; computer equipment used through election process.

A key GOP lawmaker says PA counties aren’t going to be getting the two things they’ve been calling for: earlier processing of mail ballots and more realistic deadlines.

Rep. Seth Grove (R., York) says he’s done with election legislation until 2023:
inquirer.com/politics/elect… “It is over until we get a new governor. We have learned our lesson,” said Grove, the chair of the House State Government Committee, after Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed his HB1300.

“Counties are just going to have to deal with it,” he said.

As the voter ID fight once again takes center stage in PA, you’ll probably hear a lot of competing claims.

Here are some key things to know, including why it’s so complicated to know how voter ID affects turnout and whether that’s even the right measure:
inquirer.com/politics/elect… First thing to know: Significant voter fraud, especially voter impersonation, is virtually nonexistent.

“We have tremendous evidence that voter ID laws do absolutely nothing to prevent voter fraud, because there is no systematic voter fraud to prevent,” said @blfraga.

I just spoke with Edward Cagney Mathews, the man in the video.

Among a bunch of other things, he said he was drunk and lost control.

Re: the slurs:

“If he was white, i'm gonna call him a monkey or a n--, too … anybody that knows me knows that I just talk like this.”

https://twitter.com/RobDauster/status/1412086406558724104

Mathews’ ex-wife just called. Says he’s not racist but “he believes in freedom of speech” and “his mouth gets him in trouble, definitely … yes, he made some slurs, okay? Nobody’s perfect.”

“one of his best friends is Puerto Rican, from Camden, he’s got a lot of Black friends”

PA’s SURE system doesn’t say there are 205K more votes than voters. That flawed analysis was done using incomplete data.

Reality: You simply can’t just count the number of participating voters in SURE rn — counties are STILL UPDATING vote histories.

inquirer.com/politics/elect… Yes, counties that have been dealing with a flood of mail ballots, and running the election with humans, are still finalizing their updates to vote histories in SURE.

MY OWN vote history was only updated last week (12/28) by Philly elections officials.

PA Gov. Tom Wolf on PA GOP lawmakers planning to object:

“They claim to believe that Pennsylvania’s election was compromised and that our electoral votes are suspect. This, of course, is a shameful lie. The very democracy these lawmakers swore an oath to uphold is at risk here.” PA Gov. Tom Wolf:

“The problem is these folks are not telling the truth. Because it’s a fact Pennsylvania had a fair and free election; it’s a fact that there was no fraud or illegal activity in Pennsylvania; it’s a fact that Joe Biden won the presidency.”

Congress meets today to count Electoral College votes, the last step before Biden is inaugurated.

Of course, you probably heard there may be a few bumps along the way today.

Let’s break down what to expect. A guide from @jeremyrroebuck and me:
inquirer.com/politics/elect… Something I’m keeping in mind today, thanks to @derektmuller: The law sets defaults for which votes are counted.

There’s a path, and both House and Senate would have to agree to stray from it. In the event they disagree, the defaults rule and the count continues.

When I asked Cliff Levine, Democratic lawyer representing state Sen. Jim Brewster — who wasn’t sworn in today — about next steps, he declined to discuss specifics but said they have to learn more about what the Senate’s going to do next with the election contest petition.

https://twitter.com/andrew_lessman/status/1346572679327973377

That contest petition, which Republican challenger Nicole Ziccarelli filed last week, asked the Senate to throw out the certified results as illegal, declare Ziccarelli the winner, and seat her:

As PA state senators are sworn in tomorrow, what will happen in the 45th Senatorial District, where this fight is ongoing over who won the election and counties’ different policies for counting undated mail ballots?

https://twitter.com/Elaijuh/status/1341807376526155779

The Republican-controlled State Senate won’t swear in Sen. Jim Brewster (D) tomorrow, according to a spokesperson for Senate Republicans.

Brewster won reelection, according to the certified results, but Republican challenger Nicole Ziccarelli is challenging it in court.

Remember the PA mail ballot deadline extension that the state Supreme Court ordered and PA GOP appealed to SCOTUS?

Those 10K ballots are stuck in purgatory, left out of the certified totals.

They won’t change any outcomes, but here’s why they matter:
inquirer.com/politics/elect… There were 10,097 ballots received during the grace period: 9,428 postmarked by 11/3 and 669 with missing/illegible postmarks.

Those 10K ballots aren’t currently included in the certified totals for the presidential and congressional races, (though they are for the state ones.)