Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • WA6

WA-6 PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2020 WWW.POST-GAZETTE.COM Election 2020 John Press Police separate President Donald Trump supporters and pro-vote counting demonstrators outside the Philadelphia Convention Center on Friday three days after the presidential election polls closed as they await tabulation results. Post-Gazette wire services Pro-Trump protesters some of them openly carry- ing rifles and handguns rallied outside vote-tabula- tion centers in a few cities around the country Friday, responding to accusations from President Donald Trump that the Democrats were trying to steal the White House. Elections officials in sev- eral states where Democrat Joe Biden was ahead said the anger outside their doors made them fear for the safety of their employ- ees. More than 75 people gathered at the Capitol in Harrisburg in what activist and organizer Scott Presler said was nonpartisan rally for a fair election. While most were enthu- siastic supporters of Mr.

Trump, they all said they were concerned that the election was being stolen in Pennsylvania. The the rally started at noon Friday on the Capitol steps, the sec- ond consecutive day for the gathering. Another rally is planned for noon Saturday. At rally, U.S. Rep.

Scott Perry, R-York, told the crowd, not asking for much. We want the ballots and the votes that are counted to be legal, to be valid. We want them to have been sent and have a postmark on them on or before Election Day. Not af- ter Election Pennsylvania, a battle- ground state, continued to count mail-in ballots through Friday. In Arizona, roughly 100 Trump supporters gath- ered for a third straight day in front of the Phoenix elec- tions center, where hun- dreds of workers were pro- cessing and counting bal- lots.

the poll the crowd chanted, demanding four more years in office for Mr. Trump. deputies kept protesters in a zone away from the entrance to the building. In Detroit, dozens of Trump supporters re- turned to the streets outside the convention cen- ter, where election workers counted ballots. the the pro- testers chanted.

Some car- ried signs that read, Elections Fair and Love Police cordoned off streets leading to the building and main- tained a close watch on the protest. In Rhode Island, about 100 protesters rallied out- side the state board of elec- tions headquarters, de- manding a recount in an overwhelmingly Demo- cratic state where Mr. Biden won with more than of the vote. Protesters crying foul over counts stir safety concerns Post-Gazette wire services A close margin and a large number of outstanding votes are making the Penn- sylvania contest between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden too early for The As- sociated Press to call. Without a declaration of a winner in Pennsylvania or Nevada, Mr.

Biden remains short of the 270 Electoral Col- lege votes required to claim victory. The Pittsburgh Post- Gazette relies on The Associ- ated Press count of states and their electoral votes. The Pennsylvania Secre- tary of website stated Friday that there were 102,541 more mail ballots that needed to be counted, including many from Allegheny County, a Democratic area, and the Democratic stronghold of Philadelphia County. Philadelphia has an esti- mated 40,000 more ballots many from members of the military to be counted be- fore it can certify the vote, offi- cials said on Friday. Additionally, there are po- tentially tens of thousands of provisional ballots that re- main to be tabulated, though an exact number remained unclear.

Those ballots will be counted after officials verify their eligibility to be included. One reason the race tight- ened: Under state law, officials are not allowed to process mail-in ballots until Election Day. a form of voting that has skewed heavily in Mr. favor after Mr. Trump spent months claiming that voting by mail would lead to widespread voter fraud.

a possibility the race be decided for days. If there is less than a half per- centage point difference be- tween Mr. Biden and Mr. vote total, state law dictates that a recount must be held. Why a winner has not been declared yet 2 men arrested near Phila.

vote-counting site The Washington Post Police in Philadelphia ar- rested two men on firearms charges Thursday night af- ter receiving a tip that an armed group from outside of Pennsylvania was headed to the vote-counting cen- ter, where final ballots in the presidential election are be- ing tallied. The Philadelphia Police Department said in a state- ment Friday morning that it received information that people armed with guns were coming to the conven- tion center in a silver Hum- mer truck. Inside the build- ing, election workers have been tallying remaining ballots that may prove cru- cial in determining who wins the key state, which remains to be called for ei- ther presidential candidate. Danielle Outlaw, the Philadelphia police com- missioner, said Friday that an FBI field office in Nor- folk, received a tip Thursday about the armed people traveling from Vir- ginia Beach to Philadel- phia. The police department said its officers spotted a sil- ver Hummer with no people inside at 10:20 p.m., and less than 10 minutes later, bike patrol officers spotted two men carrying guns.

Neither had a valid Pennsylvania permit to carry firearms, police said, and they were arrested. The pair acknowledged that the Hummer was theirs, and officers found another gun inside, police said. No one was hurt in the incident. Philadelphia District Attor- ney Larry Krasner an- nounced Friday that his office had charged the two men identified as Joshua Macias, 42, and Antonio Lamotta, 61, both of Chesapeake, Va. with weapons charges.

Both men were charged with carrying concealed firearms without a license, a felony, and carrying a fire- arm on public streets, a mis- demeanor, Mr. Krasner said. During a news briefing Friday afternoon before the men were charged, Mr. Krasner said a woman ap- parently traveling with the men was not arrested. Mr.

Krasner declined during the briefing to elabo- rate on the tip received by authorities. He also sought to tamp down speculation surrounding the incident, saying that this time, we do not have indications that the story is bigger than these two Mr. Krasner said officials were taking the situation but added that it turn out to be nothing more than two peo- ple deciding to come to Phil- adelphia at a particular time for a somewhat un- known Photos captured near the convention center by Phila- delphia Inquirer photogra- pher Jessica Griffin showed a Hummer with a Virginia license plate as well as a hat inside bearing an insignia for the far-right conspiracy theory group QAnon. The back window fea- tured a decal with an abbre- viation of a QAnon rallying cry: we go one, we go The FBI said in a state- ment: FBI works closely with our federal, state and lo- cal law enforcement partners to identify and stop any po- tential threats to public safety. It is vital that the FBI, our partners, and the public work together to protect our community.

As always, we encourage members of the public to remain vigilant and immediately report any sus- picious activity to law en- forcement. We have no fur- ther information for release and would refer you to the Philadelphia Police Depart- ment for any additional guid- ance at this Police received tip on armed group As tight race nears end, recount rules discussed Post-Gazette wire services With a tight presidential race, the topic of recounts has surfaced in Georgia, Wisconsin and other states. Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey announced on CNN Thursday that he expects a recount in Pennsylvania, no matter ahead. But what would that mean and how does it work? Recounts are carried out when a close margin of victory between candi- dates, or when requested, but the laws vary by state.

In Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Missis- sippi, South Carolina and Tennessee, a recount pro- cess allowed at all. how recounts work in the Keystone State. Under Pennsylvania state law, an automatic re- count is triggered if one candidate wins by a half of a percentage point or less. The secretary of state must order the recount no later than the third Wednesday following the election, and election officials must carry out the recount. In Pennsylvania, voters can also request a recount.

There is no specific vote margin required. To request a recount, three voters of an election district must sub- mit a signed petition to the county board that alleges er- rors in the vote totals. All re- quests must be made within five days of the election. If the request is appealed, vot- ers can petition the Court of Common Pleas. believe a recount is likely.

The margins right now are very narrow, but also since Pennsylvania require actual evi- dence of voter fraud, it al- lows for a lot of room in this said Nyron Craw- ford, an assistant professor in political science at Temple University. comments are a setup for a recount request allegations for fraud have been set in Unlike in many other states, candidates re- quest a recount. They gen- erally find voters to request it for them, Mr. Crawford said, and once the recount process begins, they can show up to oversee it. A mandatory recount must be completed within three weeks after the elec- tion.

There is no official deadline for a requested re- count to be completed. Automatic recounts are paid for by the state, and they can be quite expensive. But when a recount is re- quested by a petitioner, they have to put down a $50 cash deposit or a $100 bond deposit per district. If the recount reverses the result of the election, the peti- tioner gets a refund. If the petitioners appeal to the Court of Common Pleas, the court may also require the petitioner to pay all le- gal costs of the hearing.

Few recounts have led to a change in who wins an election. In the 5,778 state- wide elections over the last 20 years, there have been 31 completed statewide re- counts, according to a re- port by nonpartisan orga- nization FairVote. Only three of those 31 recounts overturned the outcome of the race, and in all three, the original margin of vic- tory was less than 0.05%, the report says. In the presidential race, there have only been two statewide recounts over the last 20 years: one in Florida in 2000 and one in Wisconsin in 2016. The original winner remained the winner after both.

The Florida recount shifted the margin by 1,247 votes and the Wisconsin recount by 571 votes, FairVote reports. State ballot count slows to near halt COUNT, FROM WA-1 The Allegheny County Return Board processes ballots at the counting facility on the North Side. As of Friday night, Demo- cratic nominee Joe Biden had been winning mail-in ballots by a more than 3-to-1 margin statewide. State Kathy Boockvar an- ticipated it to be cantly than offi- cials had previously thought and a of what they saw in the pri- mary. That number in the June contests was about 60,000.

Allegheny County received 947 that were postmarked correctly and ready to count. Then, there remained at least 85,000 provisional ballots, but not all of those will count. Provisional ballots have to be individ- ually reviewed by county boards of election and come from voters who may have experienced problems on Election Day or with their mail-in bal- lot. All ballots that are de- termined to be eligible are tallied. The counties have until Tuesday to review them.

Provisionals represent the biggest batch of ballots that are, at this point, hard to predict using data and trends, leading some to be- lieve that Mr. Trump could gain ground here. Lara Putnam, a Univer- sity of Pittsburgh profes- sor who studies the elec- toral landscape in Western Pennsylvania, said she ex- pects the provisional ballots to be Biden- heavy than mail-ins, but still net Biden more votes than Ms. Putnam said she an- ticipates some provisional ballots to be driven by usual range of that more often capture Democratic than Republi- can voters such as age and mobility while the rest are driven by mail-in ballot requests that have skewed heavily pro-Demo- crat and pro-Biden. She also cited data com- piled by Mike Johnson, data director at the Penn- sylvania AFL-CIO, who noted that in primary, mail-in ballot re- quests by Republicans were about twice as likely to end in casting a provi- sional ballot.

If those ra- tios are carried through the electorate which is a Mr. Johnson noted may see a pretty similar num- ber of and provisional He said guess a Demo- cratic advantage on their outcome. In Allegheny County all day Friday, the election warehouse on the North Side was the center of a one-by-one review process of mail-in bal- lots, which included more than 3,000 that were and needed du- plicated, 4,350 that had other issues, and 29,000 that needed to be checked because they made up the contents of a faulty batch of ballots sent by a con- tractor to voters last month. When the count was suspended at around 10:40 p.m., the workers had counted more than 17,800 votes, including the mili- tary and absentee ballots it had so far received, the ballots that were and some of the 29,000 it had to reconcile. Of those, 13,870 went for Mr.

Biden and 3,684 to Mr. Trump. On Saturday morning, the elections division will continue to review the re- mainder of the batch of 29,000 many of which had been completed Friday as well as the 4,350 that were de- termined to have other is- sues, such as a missing date or ineligible voter on the dec- laration form. Julian Routh: Post-Gazette staff writers Lauren Lee and Lacretia Wimbley contributed re- porting. Andrew photos An election watcher keeps her eye on the Allegheny County Return counting of the remaining 35,000 absentee and mail-in Allegheny County ballots on Friday on the North Side..