Thursday, November 05, 2020
I'll Type S...L....O....W....L.....Y For the Maganuts
In 2019, the Pennsylvania legislature, both houses of which are controlled by Republicans, passed a law modifying the Commonwealth's election rules to allow "no excuse" absentee, or mail-in voting. This legislation was passed by both chambers, each controlled by Republicans. It was signed into law by a Democratic governor in October of 2019, months before anyone knew there was a pandemic coming. Since then, voting by mail is a perfectly legal way to vote in Pennsylvania. It does take longer to count those votes, because signatures require validation, envelopes have to be opened, ballots have to be flattened, stacked and fed into the tallying machines. This takes time. If more Democrats availed themselves of this new way of doing things, its not the fault of "the system." Its not some nefarious plot. Counting legally cast votes isn't "cheating." Its just counting.
I'll add that if you're concerned about how long this is taking, those same legislators refused to allow elections officials to tally mailed votes as they arrived, forcing them to start counting over a million mailed ballots on Tuesday. Also, provisional votes, of which there are tens of thousands, cannot be legally examined and counted until tomorrow.
