Pennsylvania GOP, Court Demand Counties Finish Counting Ballots Before They’re Allowed To Start

These fuckers ain’t subtle. Republicans know they cannot win if we all vote, and they’re going to try every trick in the book to toss out ballots they think might go to Democrats. We told you this morning about a court in Michigan dropkicking one such effort by the Republican candidate for secretary of state. Now let’s go to Pennsylvania, where things went the other way, thanks to the Republican-dominated judiciary.

But before we head to one of the Keystone state’s 243 Wawas (never Sheetz, you animals!), let’s stop by MSNBC for a little refresher course on who is pushing to ensure that it takes for-freaking-ever to count the ballots in major metropolitan areas, and why they want it that way.

Republicans want to simultaneously sow doubt in elections to justify time-consuming processes to prevent non-existent fraud, and claim that elections are illegitimate if the counting takes more than five hours. There’s no cognitive dissonance for them, perhaps because that would require a baseline of cognition — which is heavily discouraged in their MAGA bubble. These are, after all, the same people who demanded in November of 2020 that the ballot count be stopped in Pennsylvania, where Trump was behind, while braying that workers couldn’t leave the building until they’d magically found some more votes for Trump in Arizona.

And with that somewhat overlong preamble, let’s turn to Pennsylvania, where, like in Wisconsin, Republicans have ensured that the counting will drag out for days by eliminating the ability to process absentee ballots before Election Day. (Processing the ballots includes opening the outer envelope, checking voter signatures to ensure they match, and flattening the folded ballot in order to run it through the machine.)

On top of that, the RNC, the NRCC, and the Pennsylvania GOP sued the state to block it from counting undated absentee ballots received before Election Day. There’s no argument that this is somehow going to prevent fraud — an absentee ballot received on November 5 is by definition timely. Their only argument is that it puts voters in counties that toss out those otherwise legitimate ballots at a disadvantage and that such a disparity is “eroding public trust and confidence in the integrity of Pennsylvania’s elections at a vital moment in the Nation’s and the Commonwealth’s history.”

And if there’s one thing the GOP hates, it’s eroding public trust in the integrity of our elections!

But, the Supreme Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania bought this bullshit argument, ordering election officials to segregate undated or improperly dated ballots and not count them as the litigation grinds on.

Meanwhile, Republicans have figured out a way to slow down voting in Philadelphia — and only Philadelphia — by suing to reinstate an archaic process known as poll book reconciliation, meant to root out voters who cast a late mail-in ballot which is not logged, and then vote in-person. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that, while the process caught a few dozen double votes in 2020, it caught exactly zero fraudulent votes in the two elections held in 2021, and the 2022 primary. It does, however, have the probable effect of adding days to the tabulation, at a time when Republicans are pointing to delays in counting the vote as prima facie evidence of fraud.

Last week, Philadelphia elections officials voted to do what everyone else in the state does: Count the votes first, then reconcile them. But then Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections, a legal group founded by Bill Barr and Karl Rove, sued to force them to put back the bottleneck to slow the count. And even though the court held that it was too late to force the county to reinstate the practice, the three city commissioners couldn’t take the risk of having their results challenged later because they decided to run their tabulation just like pretty much everyone else in Pennsylvania.

“I want to be very clear that when there are conversations that occur later this evening about whether or not Philadelphia has counted all of their ballots that the reason that some ballots would not be counted is that Republicans targeted Philadelphia — and only Philadelphia — to force us to conduct a procedure that no other county does,” Seth Bluestein, a Republican commissioner told the Inquirer, adding that “While we technically won the court case in Common Pleas Court, the opinion that was written was written in a way that we have no other choice but to go forward and reinstate reconciliation.”

Worse still, the city is now at risk of losing $54 million in state grants conditioned on it not stopping the canvas until all the votes are counted. Will halting the count for the mandatory poll book reconciliation count as stopping tabulation? No one knows.

Meanwhile, Rove’s attack dogs put out a tweet pushing the nonsensical claim that Philadelphia somehow dragged this process out by fighting the lawsuit: “If there are delays, only the Commissioners are to blame. The Commissioners initially dismissed RITE’s many attempts to urge them to reinstate poll book reconciliation. They ignored a letter, public comment, and even advance notice of the lawsuit,” they snark, adding that “the city should finish tabulating faster than it did in 2020.”

Because it’s fun to lie when you’re wrapping yourself in the banner of integrity. Meanwhile Trump and his surrogates are busy spreading the lie that if we don’t know the result of an election by 2 a.m., then it’s evidence of fraud.

These assholes aren’t even trying to hide their games. Hang on, kids, it’s going to be a rough night, followed by several white knuckle days.

[Philadelphia Inquirer / Mail Ballot Challenge, Documents via Democracy Docket / Poll Book Challenge, Documents via Democracy Docket]

Follow Liz Dye on Twitter!

Click the widget to keep your Wonkette ad-free and feisty. And if you’re ordering from Amazon, use this link, because reasons.