Philadelphia election officials continue vote count as Trump tries to create chaos

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Philadelphia election officials continued to count mail-in votes on Thursday and Donald Trump’s campaign continued to try to create chaos.

Pro-Trump supporters, organized by the powerful conservative group FreedomWorks, gathered throughout the day outside the Pennsylvania convention center in the heart of the city where workers have been methodically counting the city’s 358,257 mail-in ballots. They faced off with counter protesters who blasted music and loudly chanted that every vote should be counted.

The Trump campaign is so focused on Philadelphia because the city is a Democratic bastion and Joe Biden continues to collect a high percentage of the votes being counted there. Trump has seen his lead in Pennsylvania, a must-win state for his campaign, shrink significantly since election day. “Detroit and Philadelphia, known as two of the most corrupt political places anywhere in our country, easily, cannot be responsible for engineering the outcome of a presidential race,” the president said at a press conference filled with baseless conspiracies about the election Thursday evening. The comment was seen as a thinly-veiled attack on cities with substantial Black populations.

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But the Trump campaign has presented no concrete evidence of fraud in Pennsylvania or elsewhere in the state. Counting continued smoothly, as it has since election day. As of Thursday evening, Philadelphia had counted nearly 286,000 mail-in ballots, almost 80% of the total ballots cast. Despite talk of a result on Thursday night, it’s more likely a winner could be projected as soon as Friday in the state, where 90% of the mail-in votes have been counted so far.

The Trump campaign’s strategy on Thursday was built around a claim that its observers in the city were not being given adequate access to observe the count. Even though observers from both parties have been given access to the convention center, the Trump campaign complained its observers had not been able to get close enough. It secured a court order Thursday morning allowing observers to get up to six feet of workers counting.

Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general, and Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager, appeared in front of the convention center throughout the day, and continued to claim the campaign was not being given adequate access. But when the campaign went to federal court, a lawyer for the campaign admitted the campaign had observers in the hall.

Philadelphia officials briefly shut down counting to figure out how to comply with the order, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, but it resumed Thursday afternoon.

The Trump campaign has zeroed in on attacking the electoral process in Philadelphia for months. “Bad things happen in Philadelphia,” Trump said at the first presidential debate in late September. Ahead of election day, his campaign also falsely claimed observers were illegally being denied access to satellite voting locations where voters could cast their ballots early. On election day, Trump supporters amplified a video of an observer being denied access to a polling place, but the incident was based on a misunderstanding and the observer was later granted access to the site, the election judge involved told the Guardian.

Along with Georgia, Pennsylvania has emerged as one of the most important states to watch as ballots are counting. But unlike other states, election officials in Pennsylvania were prohibited from beginning to count ballots until election day, which has contributed to the delay in knowing the winner.