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    • The head of the AP elections urges patience while waiting for the results
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    The head of the AP elections urges patience while waiting for the results

    Online Niel Posted on

    Abigail Hakas/Next Generation Newsroom
    | Special for The Times

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    Pennsylvania’s top election official said he could not predict when the winner of the presidential election would be clear, but urged patience as Pennsylvania counts the results.

    “It takes time to count those millions of votes, and our election officials are working; (they) work day and night to count them as quickly as possible and with integrity,” said Al Schmidt, Pennsylvania Secretary of State and Pittsburgh native.

    “Elections are held at the county level. It’s your neighbors who run the election.”

    A state law prevents mail-in ballots from being counted until Election Day, Nov. 5. In 2020, an unusually high number of mail-in ballots, along with state law, meant that election workers needed days to complete a full count. Former President Donald Trump confiscated in time took as vulnerability, suggesting there was fraud.

    So far there are more than 1.8 million applications approved for absentee and postal voting compared to approx3 million applications approved right now in October 2020. But Schmidt is still bracing for conspiracy theories in the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump.

    “Our elections have never been more safe and secure, with a voter-verified paper ballot for every vote cast in every election,” said Schmidt, who is visiting all 67 Pennsylvania counties this election cycle . “I have no concerns about accuracy. of the process and then, if there were any problems, then they would become immediately apparent.”

    Schmidt testified before the committee on January 6 after threats were made against him and his family following a post on X, formerly Twitter, by Trump which assumed Schmidt ignored voter fraud. Schmidt, a Philadelphia commissioner in 2020, has refused to accept those claims of voter fraud in Pennsylvania.

    Now, he also heads the Pennsylvania Election Threat Task Force, established by Governor Josh Shapiro. A large part of its role is to monitor both unintentional and intentional disinformation so that the task force can respond to and be aware of any potential threats to voters or election officials that may result from the two.

    This year, all eyes have been on Pennsylvania and its 19 electoral votes. Schmidt said the increased attention to Pennsylvania’s role as a swing state doesn’t necessarily invite misinformation and misinformation, but it’s expected to be scrutinized.

    “Like any other so-called battleground state, Pennsylvania gets a lot of attention and comes under intense scrutiny, and none of those things are bad. Everyone is doing everything the way they should and doing it by the books, then scrutiny is not something to fear,” he said.

    “The only problem is when people lie about the Pennsylvania election or say things that aren’t true, which leads people who no doubt have a genuine interest in the integrity of the election to jump to conclusions that aren’t based on the facts.”

    Lara Putnam, a professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh and co-director of the Pitt Institute for Law, Policy and Cybersecurity, says social media has been used to promote both misinformation and disinformation in elections.

    In 2020, Facebook was a “real whirlwind of false claims,” ​​Putnam said. Since then. Facebook has updated its policies to address concerns about misinformation and disinformation. This year, X, formerly Twitter, was the place for these false claims.

    And the new choice is AI-generated content, including realistic posts and photos, she explained. Putnam pointed to aspecific image generated by AI which went viral on X, purportedly depicted a girl holding a puppy in the wake of Hurricane Helene and drew criticism of President Joe Biden’s response to the disaster.

    These AI-generated images and posts have real consequences, she said.

    Putnam noted that in 2020, a disproportionate number of postal ballots they came from Democrats, even from counties that voted overwhelmingly Republican. This year, she hopes people will understand the time it takes to count those ballots.

    “We hope that people have come to understand that there is a safe, absolutely reliable and secure system for counting mail-in ballots as well as in-person votes in Pennsylvania, and so we hope that we will not face a series of claims falsehoods to cast doubt on the reliability of the vote count,” she said.

    One thing Schmidt won’t be surprised to see this election season: lawsuits.

    He anticipates more lawsuits like the recent one Washington County Voting Cure Case in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

    “I was joking the other day, it’s hard to predict turnout and it’s hard to predict who’s going to win and who’s going to lose in a close election, but it’s not hard to predict the likelihood of lawsuits in a presidential election cycle because it hasn’t there was a lack of them, especially at the county level,” said Schmidt. “You’d be naive to think that, you know, you wouldn’t see more.”

    To prepare for Election Day, Schmidt zigzagged the state, talking to county election officials to find out how the Pennsylvania Department of State can support them and talking to voters.

    Abigail Hakas is a student journalist at the Next Generation Newsroom, part of the Center for Media Innovation at Point Park University. NGN is a regional news service focusing on government and business reporting in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Learn more about foundation and corporate funders TO https://www.nextgenerationnewsroom.com/sponsors.Learn more about how to support reporting in the region through tax-deductible donations atnextgenerationnewsroom.org/donate.

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