Pennsylvania could decide this election. Here is where the race stands

In a sprawling convention centre in downtown Philadelphia, more than a hundred poll workers are furiously counting the ballots that will likely decide who will win the 2020 presidential election.

Long before election day, Pennsylvania was considered the most likely tipping point state in the event of a close race, and that is what transpired. The unprecedented number of mail-in ballots in this election due to the coronavirus outbreak has added an extra layer of uncertainty to an already volatile race. 

It comes down to this: Donald Trump currently has a lead of 470,000 votes here, but that has been shrinking all morning. There are around 1.2 million absentee ballots yet to be counted, and the vast majority of those votes are coming from the Democratic strongholds of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

If those ballots continue to fall along the same party lines they have so far, Joe Biden would garner enough votes to overtake Mr Trump, win the state’s 20 electoral votes, and in all likelihood the presidency.

Mr Trump, who has made countless unsubstantiated allegations of fraud about the use of mail-in ballots, used the period in which he held a temporary lead to declare a premature victory in the early hours of Wednesday.

“This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election,” he said in a brief address from the White House.

“We want the law to be used in a proper manner, so we’ll be going to the US Supreme Court,” he added.

Those comments prompted a rebuke from both Democrats and Republicans in Pennsylvania. Tom Wolf, the state’s Democratic governor, responded to the president’s statement by promising that all votes would be counted.

“We still have over 1 million mail ballots to count in Pennsylvania. I promised Pennsylvanians that we would count every vote and that’s what we’re going to do,” he said.

“Let’s be clear: This is a partisan attack on Pennsylvania’s elections, our votes, and democracy. Our counties are working tirelessly to process votes as quickly AND as accurately as possible. Pennsylvania will have a fair election and we will count every vote.”

Al Schmidt, a Republican city commissioner responsible for elections in Philadelphia, also responded in a series of tweets.

“Philadelphia will NOT stop counting ALL legitimate votes cast by eligible voters. And we will report and report and report until the last vote is counted,” he wrote.

Outside the convention centre on Wednesday morning, the world’s press gathered television cameras pointed at the grand glass entrance hall. Inside, an army of poll workers counted ballots. Their work is slow and purposeful: each ballot has to be processed and checked by hand. That work is still ongoing, and it is unclear when it will finish. 

Democratic city commissioner Lisa Deeley told the Philadelphia Inquirer that the large number of votes had slowed them considerably.  "We've never had to count this large number of mail-in ballots and have an in-person election. We thought we had timed it right, but truthfully we've never done it before in this large number," she said.

Many had anticipated that the president might try to take advantage of what election observers call a ‘red mirage’ in Pennsylvania — that is the term to describe a temporary lead fuelled by the order in which ballots are counted. Because more Republicans vote on election day, an early lead for Mr Trump was expected because those votes are counted faster than mail-in ballots.

Election officials also knew long before today that they would not be able to post results on the night. The state received more than three million requests for mail-in ballots — an unprecedented number for a state where most people usually vote in person. They had warned that it would take around three days to count every vote.

Mr Trump has already indicated that he plans to go to the Supreme Court to block the counting of ballots in Pennsylvania. But Pennsylvania has prepared for this moment.

Precisely because of the state’s importance to both campaigns this year, Pennsylvania has already fielded a litany of lawsuits related to how it conducts this election.

The Trump campaign, and the Republican Party, have filed eight lawsuits in an attempt to limit the use of mail-in ballots. The Republican-controlled legislature also blocked efforts to begin processing those ballots before election day — a move that would have averted today’s delay.