On November 3, 2020, Pennsylvania held an election to choose a slate of twenty electors in the race for President of the United States. The major candidates were then-incumbent President Donald Trump (R) and then-former Vice President Joe Biden (D). There are 538 electors across the United States; a candidate must win an outright majority of at least 270 to win.
The result of the race certified by the Pennsylvania Department of State had Biden winning by a margin of 80,555 votes—about 1.16% of the total. Biden probably won Pennsylvania’s twenty electors, but Off on a Tangent is unable to verify the result or determine the outcome beyond a reasonable doubt. The nationwide certified result was an electoral majority of 306-232 for Biden.
The U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 1, says that electors shall be appointed “in such Manner as the Legislature [of the state] may direct.” In 2020, the Code of Pennsylvania, 25 P.S. § 3150.16, required mail-in voters to “fill out, date[,] and sign the declaration” on the return envelope, and stated that “a completed mail-in ballot must be received in the office of the county board of elections no later than [8:00 p.m.] on the day of the primary or election.”
Pennsylvania’s governor arbitrarily extended the mail-in deadline to 5:00 p.m. on the Friday after the election, and about 10,000 ballots received after the statutory deadline were counted and included in the results. Additionally, mail-in ballots with invalid or incorrect dates, missing or incorrect signatures, or other disqualifying problems were illegally “cured” and included in the results in some counties, and about 13,200 of them made it into the final count.
As described above, the U.S. Constitution vests electoral authority in the legislatures of the states . . . not the governors, and not random county officials. Any ballot that did not comply with the plain text of the laws of the state should have been excluded. This does not change because the Pennsylvania Supreme Court endorsed the illegality and the U.S. Supreme Court chose not to intervene. When a state violates its own election laws it violates the civil rights of its citizens, who are entitled to free, fair elections with clearly defined rules.
These 23,200 illegal ballots (give or take) could not have changed the outcome of the race on their own; Biden’s alleged margin of victory was more than three times larger. But if state and local officials were willing to break these rules, why should we believe they didn’t break any others? Widespread violations of any election rule undermines trust in the process and “poisons” the entire result.
On top of all this, detailed post-election analyses have revealed statistical anomalies that suggest (but do not prove) that there was manipulation and fraud on a wider scale in Democratic Party strongholds across Pennsylvania that could have been sufficient to change the outcome.
If Trump had won Pennsylvania’s twenty electors it would not have changed the national result; Biden would have won a 286-252 electoral majority. If Trump had also won Georgia’s sixteen electors it still would not have changed the national result; Biden would have won a 270-268 majority. At the time of this writing, Off on a Tangent has no reasonable doubt about the 2020 results in any other state.