President Donald Trump’s campaign has dubiously questioned the integrity of Pennsylvania’s vote count, leading the state’s top law enforcement official to fiercely repudiate the baseless attacks.
Trump: Stop counting the votes! Pennsylvania’s AG: Nope.
Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s top law enforcement official, promises his state will count all its 2020 election votes.
On Wednesday, both Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani tweeted unsubstantiated broadsides against Pennsylvania. Trump claimed the vital state found “millions of ballots left to be counted,” while his attorney accused Philadelphia — Pennsylvania’s biggest city and a Democratic stronghold — of “massive cheating.” Those statements pair with the campaign’s just-filed lawsuit to stop the count in Pennsylvania, as well as Trump’s premature declaration of victory in the state.
There’s no evidence of foul play in Pennsylvania’s vote count and no reason to stop its progress. The Trump campaign’s actions appear to be part of a broader strategy to delegitimize the election that former Vice President Joe Biden is currently favored to win.
Asked about that Republican effort in a Wednesday afternoon interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro — a Democrat — shot it down.
“We will not let anything interrupt that process of counting,” he said. “We’re going to follow the law, we’re going to count the votes, and we’re going to certify the will of the people.”
“The campaign is over,” he asserted.
Shapiro struck a defiant tone, and it makes sense for him to push so strongly against the Trump campaign’s claims. Pennsylvania has long been considered one of the most important states in the election. Trump won the state in 2016, and its 20 electoral votes are seen as crucial to his reelection.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Trump leads the count in Pennsylvania by roughly 250,000 votes. The Biden campaign, though, is confident it can win the state since many mail-in ballots haven’t yet been fully counted in Democratic strongholds like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Shapiro said all the votes will be counted by Friday, which means the public may have to wait until then to know who won the election — unless we find out sooner.
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