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Pennsylvania's Commonwealth court just ruled that ballots that are in Allegheny or Philadelphia must be counted, even if they are undated or misdated. This only applies to ballots submitted on time, purportedly. The takes that I've generally seen online are that this is evidence that they have plans for fraud. The court argued this, though, on the grounds that dates are unnecessary, as the counties have other means of telling when votes were submitted (I think they scan a barcode when received). But what's certainly a problem is that this decision was written to apply only to Allegheny (where Pittsburgh is) and Philadelphia counties, the two counties that contribute the largest margin to the democrats. Given that they estimate that around 75% of mail-in ballots are for democrats in Pennsylvania, the most mail-in ballots are from suburban and urban voters, and that around 10000 ballots were not counted for that in 2022, this could have the effect of aiding the democrats by 5000 votes or so. Thankfully, this is only 0.07% of the vote, so not all that likely to be decisive.
The other interesting feature of this case is that the court ignored non-severability provisions, which said that if any provision of the act, or its application to any person or circumstance, was held invalid, the whole act is void. They did so merely by arguing for a presumption of severability in Pennsylvania laws, despite the explicit language to the contrary in this case. Voiding the act would have thrown out the entire mail-ballot system. Them striking down part of it, but not the whole thing, against the explicit text, seems the most sophistic part of the whole thing, to me.
This can still be appealed to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. It's blue, though, so I'm not expecting changes. Thankfully, it doesn't seem like, barring fraud, the effect will be too large.
Edit: Make sure you read the comments of @Rov_Scam, where he argues that I'm not representing this accurately or completely—I don't want to be misleading.
I find most relevant the announcement from Pennsylvania's Department of State:
What an odd thing to say. So hire more workers, run campaigns, do everything necessary to ensure you have the results. If significantly poorer, significantly less bureaucratically competent and on-the-whole significantly less organized and civilized countries can manage elections in single days, the continuing tolerance of statements like this -- statements that are expressly narrative primers for fraud -- in the Union is so goddamn insulting. They have the ability, we know this objectively from other countries, and we know from this statement they could but decline to do so. This is ostensible incompetence at counting ballots covering for a highly competent fraud machine.
The general upside is they'll lose the national regardless of fraud in Pennsylvania. The dream upside is they lose the state while posting so many precincts with actual and effectual >100% turnout even the laziest audit torches them.
One of the things I find most irritating about gish gallop election fraud claims is the way they breathlessley move between theories that assume the theft of the 2020 election was something that Democrats had been planning for months and that it was something that was done at the last minute after they realized Trump was going to win. Somehow, your post seems to capture both of these sentiments simultaneously — the PA Department of State is planning on rigging the election, but it's apparently impossible for them to do so without a couple extra days on the back end. How this is supposed to work is beyond me.
Respectfully, I think you're conflating two entirely separate mechanisms here. Actions taken at the state level do not require coordination at the local level, even if the actions taken at the state level can enable actions taken at the local level.
We know that Pennsylvania, and in particular Philadelphia, is unusually corrupt. So corrupt, in fact, that a former congressman was recently convicted on election fraud charges.
It is entirely possible that the department of state is not rigging the election. It's also entirely possible that the department of state is pointedly not taking steps to assure that other parties do not engage in illegal activities.
At the local level, we already know that actors have wildly rigged elections in multiple Pennsylvania precincts already. Are we supposed to ignore that evidence and not factor it into our priors? Given that the constant media drumbeat of "Trump as Existential Threat" has been banging for close to a decade now, are we supposed to believe that nobody might bend the rules (again, still)? Especially when it's for the Greater Good? Especially when we know that the supposed watchers are looking the other way?
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