News & Brews October 29, 2024
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Non-stop ballot counting in effect for election
Thanks to a 2022 law, the Nov. 5 election will be the first presidential election in which Pa. counties must count mail-in ballots non-stop beginning at 8:00 p.m. on Election Day. Previously, counties could take breaks and then resume counting the ballots. The Post-Gazette reports that the legislation, Act 88, “set up a state-funded pool of about $45 million for grants to be made to counties but included various mandates, including the ‘continue without interruption’ counting provisions related to mail ballots.” It remains to be seen how this will ultimately impact when election results are known.
Number of Pa. registered voters hits all-time high
October 21st was the last day before the election to register to vote. And according to the data released yesterday by the Pa. Department of State, the gap between registered Democrats and registered Republicans has fallen to just 281,091. CNHI News further explains, “Four years ago, there were 685,818 more Democrats registered than Republicans….Democrats have 237,507 fewer registered voters in this cycle.” Meanwhile, the number of Pa. registered voters has reached an “all-time high” of 9,161,978.
‘News’ outlet spends >$1 million to boost Democrats
A Broad + Liberty investigation finds that “Democrats and progressives appear to be using news sites less for journalism purposes and more as a launching pad for social media campaigns that, although they may not directly advocate voting for one candidate over another, still appear designed to influence public opinion with positive messages for Democrats.” Case in point: The story looks at The Keystone, which “is a left-of-center, online-only outlet that began in 2020.” The outlet, which is “open about its leftward partisan bias is also spending well over a million dollars this year on political Facebook posts boosting Democratic candidates like Kamala Harris and Pennsylvania auditor general candidate Malcolm Kenyatta, sometimes with advertisements that don’t even bother to link to any story produced by the news site.”
Larry Krasner v. Elon Musk
Apparently uncovering a newfound desire to appear to be doing something, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner has sued Elon Musk over his $1 million-per-day giveaway. Musk, of course, is backing Trump. Krasner must have been too busy avoiding prosecuting criminals in 2020 to file a similar lawsuit against liberal Mark Zuckerberg, whose election money was “heavily skewed” toward Democrat counties.
J.D. Vance talks school choice at Harrisburg event
This past weekend, Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance participated in a school-choice focused town hall event at the Rock Church in Harrisburg. The forum was hosted by Black Pastors United for Education (BPUE) and moderated by BPUE founder/CEO and Rock Church Senior Pastor Joshua Robertson. PennLive reports that at the event, which was “filled to capacity,” Vance “made a case for school choice and school vouchers.” Robertson previously wrote in the Wall Street Journal that he had invited Democrats and Republicans to participate in two town hall events, but Democrats did not accept the invitation. Watch the town hall here.
Op-Ed: ‘One Trump-y Democrat could help far-left Philly progressives’
As Democrat state Rep. Frank Burns (Cambria County) is running for re-election, he’s trying to paint himself as a Trump-y leader who relates to his rural district. But our president and CEO Matt Brouillette points out in Broad + Liberty that “behind the façade, Burns is a willing cog in the progressive Left’s efforts to take Pennsylvania down a path of economic failure, lost opportunity, and population decline.” Indeed, Philly progressives count on Burns to advance their agenda.