You've heard Trump bellowing about the "rigged" presidential election in Pennsylvania. You probably read about his plans to claim the same thing after the mid-terms -- that officials "suddenly found" millions of ballots to undermine his victories.
What you probably don't know is that Trump backers in the state's legislature openly blew up bipartisan proposals to allow those mail-in ballots to be counted so the results would be available on election night.
That's right. The TV reality star rewrote the story line so it would fall in line with his version of reality. He wanted all those ballots to pile up so he could claim fraud. And now he's going to do it again.
Between the primary and the general election, some folks eyed making changes to pre-empt a drawn-out vote-counting process in November. The Department of State recommended changing the law to allow pre-canvassing three weeks ahead of Election Day, and the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania made a similar ask. But talks between the Democratic governor and the majority-Republican state legislature didn’t go anywhere.
Republicans in the General Assembly furthered a bill that would’ve given three days of pre-canvassing time to the counties, but it had some other measures attached to it, too — including one that would have effectively banned ballot drop boxes. Gov. Tom Wolf opposed the bill for making it “harder, not easier, for citizens to vote,” his spokesperson said at the time.
Ultimately, all hopes of a bipartisan agreement crumbled, and the November election rolled around. It took half a week of ballot counting for the winner of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes (and the entire presidency) to become clear — all with conspiracy theories starting to form and former President Donald Trump trying to prematurely claim victory in the meantime, as officials continued to ask the public for patience.
The news coverage makes it sound like it was all a rational political disagreement, but I remember statehouse Republicans being quite open about the fact that their Orange Lord and Savior wanted it that way, and he was going to get it.
