Pennsylvania Is Already Gaslighting Us About Election Night Returns

Many of us can still recall Election Night 2020, when Donald Trump was leading in the battleground states late into the night, only for Joe Biden's numbers to inexplicably surge past Trump's with a seemingly impossible mathematical surge after workers went home for the night. We were told that this was normal, and eventually, anyone who questioned this was deemed a conspiracy theorist and found themselves censored and even banned from social media.

It makes no sense why other countries can promptly count their ballots within a few hours while the United States can't seem to conduct an election where both sides can feel confident in the results. Now officials are priming us to accept this chaos once more; Pennsylvania officials are already warning in an ominous post on X that counties might not count all ballots on Election Night.

And if you think that's bad, the above post from August 8 wasn't the last one addressing this issue. A few days later, the Pennsylvania Department of State followed up with an "explanation," claiming that counties can't start processing mail-in ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day and the only way to change this is if the legislature passes reforms that the governor can sign into law. 

Considering that Democrats control the Pennsylvania House and the governorship and Republicans control the Senate, it's unlikely that any reform will happen.

Some consider Pennsylvania to be the most crucial battleground state in this election. There shouldn’t be nearly as many mail-in ballots in 2024 as there were in 2020. That's what makes this gaslighting particularly scary. Many believe that Pennsylvania will ultimately determine the winner, so when the Department of State tells us that we shouldn't expect a count of all the ballots on Election Night in this crucial battleground state, that concerns me, and it should concern you, too.

I don't care what you think about what happened in 2020. There were problems with that election, and there has been more than enough time to fix these problems so that everyone can feel confident in the election outcome regardless of the result. But now, mail-in ballots are a blanket excuse for why we can’t know the election results on the same night, and we’re supposed to accept that? How convenient.

Sorry, I’m not buying it.