On Dec. 2, 2016, Donald J. Trump won the formerly blue state of Pennsylvania by only 44,292 votes.
On November 29th, the New York Times reported that Donald Trump was winning the state with 2,959,839 votes, while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won 2,895,436 votes. Donald J. Trump had 64,403 more votes than Hillary Clinton.
Trump’s lead shrunk significantly after the final certified results in Pennsylvania showed Donald Trump winning the state with 2,970,411 votes, while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got only 2,926,411 votes. Trump’s lead in Pennsylvania dropped by 20,111 votes after counties wrapped up the counting of overseas ballots and settled provisional ballot challenges.
Real Clear Politics reports – There’s little doubt that as the number of mail-in ballots increases, so does fraud. A 2012 report in The New York Times noted that voter fraud involving mail-in ballots “is vastly more prevalent than the in-person voting fraud that has attracted far more attention, election administrators say. In Florida, absentee-ballot scandals seem to arrive like clockwork around election time.” According to a Wall Street Journal report on voter exploitation in Hispanic communities in Texas, mail-in ballots have “spawned a mini-industry of consultants who get out the absentee vote, sometimes using questionable techniques.” Poor, elderly, and minority communities are most likely to be preyed upon by so-called ballot “brokers.”
Concerns about fraud in mail-in ballots were serious enough that a 2008 report produced by the CalTech/MIT Voting Technology Project recommended that states “restrict or abolish on-demand absentee voting in favor of in-person early voting.”
A whopping 372,000 applications for mail-in ballots in the critical swing state of PA have been rejected, because it was discovered they were duplicates—yes, duplicates!
Fox News– Pennsylvania has cast off hundreds of thousands of applications for mail-in ballots ahead of the 2020 election, because of confusion about the process.
About 372,000 requests were rejected, as reported by ProPublica on Friday, largely because many of them, about 90%, were duplicates. Overall, one out of every five requests for mail-in ballots are being rejected, according to the publication.
The main reason? Many people who voted during the June primaries may have already checked a box to request a mail-in ballot for the November election.
However, people who made more than one request should eventually receive their ballot, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania State Department said. They can also head to the polls on Election Day.
The spokesperson said about 2 million people have selected an option to automatically have ballots sent for the current calendar year, meaning they do not need to reapply.
More than 2.7 million Pennsylvanians have requested mail-in ballots this election.
Pro Publica reports- Though it may deter some people from voting, the mass rejection of ballot applications is unlikely to have a big effect on turnout. Voters who submitted duplicate applications should eventually receive a ballot. Those who don’t can still vote at the polls on Election Day.
An estimated 208,000 Pennsylvania voters sent in the spurned requests, some submitting them multiple times. Although the state’s email rejecting the requests describes them as duplicates, it doesn’t explain why, prompting some people to reapply. ProPublica and The Philadelphia Inquirer identified hundreds of voters who submitted three or more duplicate applications; one voter appears to have submitted 11 duplicates.
The state is expecting a record volume of ballots to be sent by mail and, as it stands, counties can’t begin the cumbersome process necessary to ultimately tally those votes until Election Day.
There is concern that the longer it takes Pennsylvania to tally its final vote count, the more likely it is that there will be misgivings about the security of the process.
Correction: The original title read 372,000 ballots rejected, it should have read 372,000 ballot applications rejected. In the article, we clearly stated that ballot applications were rejected.
