How Pennsylvania’s New Mail-in Ballot Law Could Create Election Night Chaos – By AJ Vicens (Mother Jones) / March 4 2020
“No one’s experienced what we’re all about to experience in 2020.”
Imagine this: It’s the night of November 3, 2020 and eyeballs across the country are glued to television. As results trickle in, networks begin making calls in the presidential race, filling states red for President Trump or blue for the Democratic ticket.
In 2016, just 80,000 votes in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania gave Trump his electoral college win. Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes are the biggest prize among these closely watched swing states, and are widely assumed to be a prerequisite to winning the presidency. And initial results, based on day of votes, suggest a winner. But over the course of the next 24 hours or so, hundreds of thousands of mailed ballots are counted, and the candidate who looked like the victor on election night has fallen behind. That candidate’s supporters—and perhaps the candidate themself—claims foul play or rigging. Chaos ensues.
“If we don’t know for 24 hours or 48 hours…That is the ultimate concern.”
As things stand, election officials in the state fear Americans could confront this exact hypothetical this fall. As Rick Hasen, an elections administration expert and law professor at the University of California, Irvine, recently told me, its one of his “nightmare scenarios.” New rules this year allow all Pennsylvania residents to request to cast ballots by mail, an opportunity that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of voters will take up. Under existing state law, they cannot be counted, or even opened, until after 8pm on election night, when traditional polling locations close. In a state where Trump topped Hillary Clinton by just 44,292 votes, these ballots could be decisive—and the process could take up to three days.
Pennsylvania’s new rules are part of a sweeping set of election reforms lawmakers enacted after the state settled a 2016 lawsuit filed by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein that argued that the state’s then-largely paperless voting system violated voters’ constitutional rights. While the lawsuit focused on introducing paper-backed voting systems, the reforms also included a longer period to register to vote, the elimination of straight-party voting, and new provisions allowing any Pennsylvanian to request a mail in ballot for any reason. Previously, state law only permitted voting by mail for narrower groups—like people with disabilities that would keep them from the polls or those who had a demonstrated need to be outside their home county on Election Day.
Continue to article: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/03/pennsylvania-election-night/
