Waiting for Pennsylvania: Day 3 of vote count underway
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania counted more votes Thursday as Democrat Joe Biden looked for a victory in one more state to give him the White House and President Donald Trump sought to keep his reelection hopes alive.
Some of the state’s most heavily populated locales, including Montgomery and Chester counties in the Philadelphia suburbs, reported finishing their tallies. The counting continued in Philadelphia and in other counties throughout Pennsylvania two days after Election Day.
The Trump campaign and the Republican Party mounted several legal challenges to aspects of the vote count, contending, for example, that GOP election observers were kept too far away from the tabulation in Philadelphia, that some Democratic-leaning counties unfairly allowed people to fix technical problems with their mail-in ballots, and that mail-in ballots arriving after Tuesday should not be counted.
Trump scored one legal victory as a state appeals court on Thursday granted more access to party and candidate observers, allowing them to get closer — 6 feet away — to election workers processing mail-in ballots in Philadelphia.
The decision came after the Trump campaign complained that its observer could not get close enough to election workers to see the writing on mail-in ballot envelopes, to ensure that the envelope contains a signature and an eligible voter’s name and address.
Ballots without that kind of information could be challenged or disqualified. A Philadelphia judge had turned down the Trump campaign’s complaint, saying that observers are allowed by law to watch, not audit.
It was unclear whether any of the legal challenges would make a difference to an eventual outcome.
Democratic Gov. Wolf accused Republicans of seeking to undermine confidence in the election results, and his elections chief said the state has acted legally and properly to ensure a complete and accurate count. More than 2.6 million mail-in ballots were cast, and there has been no report of fraud or any other problem with the accuracy of the count.
Appearing on “CBS This Morning,” state Attorney General Josh Shapiro — also a Democrat and seeking reelection in a race that has not yet been called — said the count “may be going a little slow, but it’s going very, very smooth."
He added: "I recognize everybody’s on edge. ... Everybody wants to know and the best thing we can do is get an accurate count and make sure that these legal votes are counted and that’s exactly what’s happening here in Pennsylvania.”