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This is troubling on many levels. First, numbers/calls/results on Election night are NEVER final. Second, counting votes is not "stealing" votes. It's counting them. https://twitter.com/jonathanvswan/status/1322981523608449024
Some context on Pennsylvania, the state that could very well decide the election. State law prohibits counting absentee/mail-in ballots before 7 a.m. on Election Day. This is not new. What IS new is a nearly 3,000% increase in absentee ballot requests from 2016.
This increase (the largest of any state) is due partially to the pandemic. PA doesn't have early in-person voting like many other states, so voting by mail is a more popular pandemic alternative to traditional in-person, day-of voting. But COVID-19 isn't the only factor.
PA had also already changed its laws BEFORE the pandemic to allow no-excuse absentee voting. 2020 is the first general election in which any PA voter can vote absentee. BUT, you still have to request a ballot. This is part of the reason why absentee requests have skyrocketed.
From the data the state has reported, we see that about two-thirds of those requests are from Democrats who, as we've seen in polling throughout the country, are less likely to vote in person. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/elections/early-voting.html
This is especially true in Democratic strongholds of the state like Philly, where Dems requested 3 times the absentee ballots Republicans did. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/01/us/politics/democrats-in-person-voting.html
So here's the point: the more Democratic an area is, the more likely it is to have lots of mail-in votes. The more mail-in votes, the longer it will take to count. We won't know the results of PA on Election night. And as more votes get counted, the outlook could majorly shift.
Let's know going in that this can and will likely happen, let's skip the premature race calling and let's wait until a significant amount of the votes are counted.
I voted absentee in Pennsylvania. I followed every rule and took care to give no reason for my ballot to be tossed. I drove 40 minutes to drop it off at a ballot box so I knew it wouldn't arrive late. Waiting for my vote to be counted is not voter fraud. It's democracy.
