'Reprehensible': Why 2 swing states may not announce a 2024 election winner for several days

27 July 2024

The 2024 presidential election may come down to how a handful of critical swing states vote, and a winner may not be declared in two of those states for several days due to mail-in ballot rules.

In order to capture a majority of Electoral College votes, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris — the presumptive Democratic nominee expected to become the official standard-bearer at next month's Democratic National Convention — will be competing heavily in a small handful of battleground states. In both 2016 and 2020, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin played decisive roles in determining which side crossed the 270 electoral vote threshold.

According to a recent Washington Post report, the nation may be waiting on those two states' mail-in ballot count to be completed for several days after Tuesday, November 5. And while voters will be on pins and needles waiting for a winner, election workers could be targets of harassment and threats during that prolonged period of uncertainty.

The Post reported that both states are unique in that they have rules on the books prohibiting the counting of mail-in ballots prior to Election Day, which is known as "pre-canvassing." The Democratic-run Pennsylvania House of Representatives advanced a bill to allow county election officials to start counting mail-in ballots a week before Election Day, but the Republican-controlled senate declined to bring the bill up for a vote.

“It’s reprehensible that they didn’t get it done,” Kathy Boockvar, who was Pennsylvania's Democratic secretary of state in 2020, told the Post. “This is not rocket science. The reality is that not passing this bill will mean that ballots will take longer to count, which means it will be longer until we have the results of the election.”

One of the bill's co-sponsors, Democratic Rep. Scott Conklin, said county officials in charge of running elections repeatedly told him that the top item on their 2024 wish list was to be able to pre-canvass. He accused Republicans of purposefully creating an environment that fosters skepticism and mistrust by refusing to allow Pennsylvania's election results to be finalized more efficiently.

"This is a perfect case of where the elected officials are purposely causing a delay, causing an atmosphere of conspiracy and doing it on the backs of good citizens who trust them," Conklin said of GOP senators in the Keystone State.

In 2020, election workers around the country were subjected to harassment and death threats. Then-President Donald Trump claimed victory early in Pennsylvania as mail-in ballot counting was underway, only for the commonwealth's mail-in ballot count to ultimately favor then-candidate Joe Biden. When Biden pulled ahead and secured Pennsylvania's electoral votes on the Saturday after the 2020 election — and the Electoral College majority in the process — then-Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani famously alleged election fraud during a press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia County commissioner Seth Bluestein, who was a deputy commissioner in 2020, told the Post that he and his team received death threats while mail-in ballots were being counted. Local police ended up arresting two armed men who drove from Virginia and were convinced that election fraud was taking place. The men had both a 9mm handgun and an AR-15 style rifle along with 160 rounds of ammunition. A hat in the vehicle bore the logo for the far-right QAnon conspiracy movement.

"That larger window of time when the final result is not known — that is where a lot of this harassment and threat environment can come about,” Bluestein said. “If we had pre-canvassing, it would really limit that window of opportunity for the spread of mis- and disinformation.”

Click here to read the Post's report in full (subscription required).

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