So, by way of warning about what you are about to read, here’s how one of my former clients explained the facts of political life in Pennsylvania: “We haven’t had an honest election in Philadelphia since 1682, and we’re not about to start now.“

It’s one of the crucial battleground states upon which the US election, now just two days away, could swing. Some have argued that it is the most important one of all, though there are others like well known Democrat supporter, political commentator and pollster, Mark Halperin, who think it might be Wisconsin:

To illustrate how pivotal Wisconsin has become, he mentioned his sources—two Republicans and one Democrat with strong knowledge of the state—who said they would be “somewhere between surprised and shocked if Kamala Harris won Wisconsin.”….. For Harris, victory in Pennsylvania may not be enough. If she cannot secure Wisconsin, her path to the White House could collapse. Halperin’s pointed advice to voters and observers alike is clear: “Watch Wisconsin.”

Interesting and I’ll keep an eye on the place this Wednesday afternoon, NZ time.

But if the hinge is Pennsylvania, as most expect, then it will pay you to read three articles about the history of voting in the state and the corruption that has always been part of the scene, written by a guy who should know, George Parry:

I am a retired trial lawyer who spent 20 years as a federal and state prosecutor and subsequently litigated civil and criminal cases for 30 years. As such, I have both prosecuted and defended corrupt elected Pennsylvania office holders and have learned quite a bit about their ethically challenged attitude regarding election fraud.

Herewith links to the three articles, with a brief summary and/or appropriate quote from each (none of them are long pieces).

PART 1: Recent election history.
In 2020 the State Supreme Court (elected Democrat judges) overrode the legislators – who the State constitution said were the only ones who had the power to write election laws – and mandated that a mail-in ballot had to be counted and could not be rejected even if:

  • It had been received up to three days after Election Day
  • Was not postmarked by the statutory Election Day deadline
  • Did not have a signature or has one that didn’t match the one on record for the voter.

Thankfully, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s bizarre rulings are no longer in effect. Today, mail-in ballots must bear signatures matching those on record and must be received by Election Day. But, as will be discussed in later installments, it remains to be seen whether those safeguards will be enough to prevent the rigging of the upcoming election in Pennsylvania.
….
Trafalgar’s Robert Cahaly said that Trump would have to be ahead by 4 or 5 percentage points to “overcome the voter fraud that’s going to happen there.”

Something else to watch for on Wednesday.

PART II, Registered voters and the slow slippage of the Democrats.
The huge Democrat advantage in registration numbers over the GOP has slipped a lot in the last four years, but there has been a nearly equivalent rise in the number of unaffiliated voter registrations.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of State’s presidential election data, in 2020 Joe Biden won Pennsylvania by 80,555 votes. When he did so, Pennsylvania Democrats had a 685,818 voter registration advantage over Republicans.  But today, thanks in significant part to an aggressive and prolonged statewide Republican voter registration campaign, the Democrat advantage has been reduced to 297,824.
…
in 2020, Philadelphia accounted for 20 percent of Pennsylvania’s Democrat vote. But by 2022, that had dropped to 15 percent and is expected to go lower in 2024 as the working class — Black, White, and Latino — continues to “move right.” 

That means the legendary Democrat machine has less to work with “getting out the vote”. Parry quotes a local GOP leader in Philadelphia’s 45th Ward:

“When I first started in politics in 1978, the managerial class was Republican — no one votes the way their bosses vote. Now, most people in the managerial class vote Democratic and no one is voting the way their boss is. Most of the Democrats and the Democratic Party has (sic) become the party of the upper middle class.” 

Party affiliation and registration don’t translate directly to votes, but they give the party machines something to work with on the ground – and that now includes a GOP machine:

PART III, Mail-in ballots in 2024

Going into Election Day [2020], Biden was ahead by 1,400,150 votes and went on to win Pennsylvania by 80,555 votes. But a shift appears to be underway. The Pennsylvania Department of State reports that, as of Oct. 29, 2024, 849,849 ballots have been cast by registered Democrats, 468,067 by registered Republicans, and 155,909 by others. So to date, the Democrat mail-in ballot advantage over the GOP stands at 381,782. 

I can’t see the Democrats turning 381,782 into anything close to 1.4 million in just six days, but a big part of the reason is that the GOP has figured out how do the same, unlike 2020 when 141,000 Republicans requested a mail-in ballot but never sent it back and were never chased up. That would have won the election for Trump.

So it is that PA Chase, Early Vote Action, and the RNC believe that the key to victory lies in aggressively canvassing and turning out the vote in the rural red counties where Trump is popular. For example, PA Chase is fielding over 120 full-time “vote chasers” to knock on 500,000 doors before Election Day. They report that they have already contacted over 400,000 voters and expect to reach their goal.
…
These groups are “chasing the vote” by going door-to-door in deep red counties to motivate the newly registered Republicans as well as preexisting “low or no propensity” GOP voters to complete and mail their ballots or, in the alternative, vote in person. 

About bloody time. For about three decades, 1970’s-1990’s, Democrats marvelled at the GOP machine’s ability to get after donors before and during campaigns and then voters on election day with advertising mail out campaigns, computerised records and such.

But since 2008 it’s been all Democrat, with superior IT that has information on some 256 million Americans, can slice and dice that data to predict possible Democrat voters (you really should read that whole article) and then directs their ground troops to those voters via phone apps – as well as having a huge spending advantage via rich donors, especially from Silicon Valley, who have also supplied the superior tech (Mitt Romney’s famously crashed on election day 2012).

Perhaps this pendulum is swinging back to the GOP?