On election night and into Wednesday, Twitter and Facebook have continued to label inaccurate election posts from Trump and others — Twitter, Facebook and YouTube remained on alert as the lack of a clear election result kept the online misinformation flowing.
YouTube says it won't remove an OAN video called “Trump won”, which claims Democrats are tossing GOP ballots, but says the video undermines election confidence — - Google-owned YouTube refused to take down a video that falsely claims Trump won the Presidential election and democrats committed voter fraud.
So Election Day is over, but the election continues.
The world’s attention has turned to a set of swing states still counting important mail-in votes, particularly Pennsylvania. So what exactly is happening today? How are counts happening? Is the election fair and secure?
“I urge everyone to remain patient,” Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said in a press conference today, “We are going to accurately count every single ballot.”
“The vote count, as I’ve said many times, is never done on the day of election night. The counties are doing this accurately as quickly as they possibly can.”
Across the state, mail-in ballots postmarked on or before Election Day are still arriving—don’t forget there have been significant postal delays—and so counting continues. The Republican state legislature declined to change Pennsylvania law, which meant that processing of over 2.5 million mail-in votes could only begin on Tuesday morning, while other states started the process much earlier. So the processing starts later, the counting starts later, and the work is greater for mail-in ballots.
“The practical labor associated with mail-in ballots has more steps than in-person voting,” said Eddie Perez, a Texas-based election administration expert with the nonpartisan OSET Institute. But, he added, “Both in human and technology features, there’s a lot of safeguards for mail-in ballots.”
Here’s a concise but thorough rundown of the counting, security, and integrity process right now in Pennsylvania:
Decades of history, independent study, and these extra security steps explain why mail-in ballots are not easily susceptible to fraud, and why attempts to paint them as frail are baseless disinformation, a false narrative propagated first and foremost by the president of the United States. In decades of increasing mail-in voting around the United States, widespread fraud is nonexistent.
The Trump campaign, having now lost in the key swing state of Wisconsin, has said it will sue in Michigan and Pennsylvania to stop the ongoing counting of ballots, while falsely claiming victory despite many votes still remaining uncounted. Votes counted earlier in the process favor Trump, while the mail-in votes from Democratic areas that are still being counted are expected to favor Biden.
The counting in Pennsylvania could carry on through Friday.
There is one more scenario to address. Pennsylvania automatically recounts votes if the result is within 0.5%. A loser can request and pay for a recount by going to court and alleging errors in the vote count.
So far there is no reason to believe any such errors have occurred but, as has been said so many times, there is still a long way to go in Pennsylvania—and that means there may still be a long way to go for everyone.
This is an excerpt from The Outcome, our daily email on election integrity and security. Click here to get regular updates straight to your inbox.
Intel acquires Israel-based Cnvrg.io, which operates a platform for data scientists to build and run ML models; Intel says Cnvrg.io will remain independent — Intel continues to snap up startups to build out its machine learning and AI operations. In the latest move, TechCrunch has learned …
Sources: China says Ant Group can't proceed with IPOs until it complies with new capital requirements and reapplies for licenses to operate nationwide — - Listing of Jack Ma's fintech giant was halted on Tuesday — Ma criticized regulators for stifling innovation last month
DHS and the FBI are investigating a robocall and text campaign warning US voters to “stay safe and stay home” — A Department of Homeland Security official said the FBI was investigating the call, which, along with new robotexts that surfaced in Michigan, prompted warnings about misinformation
European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde says the ECB is now seeking public comments on a potential digital euro — European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde Sunday announced an ECB survey of public opinion regarding the issuance of a digital euro, implying the central bank …