Pennsylvania appeals 4,300 votes: it could change the outcome of the US presidential election
5 November 2024 23:19
In 14 counties in the state of Pennsylvania, 4,300 votes of American voters who voted from abroad have been appealed. The media suggest that this may affect the result of the vote.
This is reported "Komersant Ukrainian" with reference to the AP.
In the key state for the election of the American President, Pennsylvania appealed the votes of Americans who sent a vote by mail, without changing the voter registration, and citizens living abroad and are not members of the military.
The deadline to appeal the issuance of mail-in ballots was Friday.
Now the 4,300 appealed votes cannot be counted in the results, because they must be withdrawn until county election commission officials hold hearings on the claims. Such hearings are scheduled to take place after the election, on Nov. 8.
AP recalls that Pennsylvania is a critically volatile state that could be a deciding factor in the battle between Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and Republican nominee Donald Trump.
“The 4,300 mail-in ballots (votes) in question could be enough to determine which (candidate) wins the state and gets 19 electoral votes,” the article said.
In Lycoming County, 72 of the complaints came from a lawyer for PA Fair Elections, conservatives who have fueled right-wing attacks on voting procedures. However, the lawyer noted that she filed those complaints as an individual, not as a member of any organization.
In York County, the election commission dismissed 354 complaints, but the chief election official said the commission agreed to keep those ballots separate during the appeal period.
And Lawrence County has 52 complaints pending. In Chester County, complaints were filed by Trump supporters who said they were “nonpartisan.” In Bucks County, about 1,300 complaints have been filed, most of them from Republican Sen. Jarrett Coleman.
We should add that each state has its own rules that determine who can participate in the vote count, as well as the order of counting and at what stages and how the process can be monitored by voters, including observers.
In the United States, there are such concepts as “blue” and “red” states. Voters in these states vote predominantly for one party in presidential and other elections – the Republican Party in “red states” and the Democratic Party in “blue” states. There are also states where voting fluctuates between the candidates of the Democratic and Republican parties, and they play a key role in the elections, these are the so-called “shaky states”.
The peculiarity of presidential elections in the USA is that they are indirect, i.e. the winner is not always the one who received the majority of votes. In modern US history, such cases have happened twice already, for example, in 2016 Hillary Clinton gained almost three million more votes than Donald Trump, but still lost. This also happened in the 2000 election, when Al Gore got more votes, but George W. Bush Jr. won.
