Yesterday The American Spectator published the third installment of my assessment of the presidential election in Pennsylvania.

Here it is.

This is part three of George Parry’s assessment of the 2024 election in Pennsylvania. Find part one here and part two here.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of State, in the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden received 3,458,229 votes, consisting of 1,995,720 mail-in ballots and 1,409,341 in-person votes on Election Day. In contrast, Donald Trump received 3,377,674 votes, consisting of 595,570 mail-in ballots and 2,731,230 votes on Election Day. In short, going into Election Day, Biden was ahead by 1,400,150 votes and went on to win Pennsylvania by 80,555 votes.

But a shift appears to be underway. The Pennsylvania Department of Statereports that, as of Oct. 29, 2024, 849,849 ballots have been cast by registered Democrats, 468,067 by registered Republicans, and 155,909 by others. So to date, the Democrat mail-in ballot advantage over Republican stands at 381,782. 

These numbers will change since mail-in ballots will be accepted up until 8 p.m. on Election Day. But to the extent that the party identifiers on the mail-in ballot return envelopes more or less track the actual votes therein, it appears that the Republicans may be on course to materially improve their pre-Election Day position vis-a-vis the Democrats.

As previously discussed in this series, thanks to the efforts of the Republican National Committee and Republican organizations such as Early Vote Action, the Democrats’ 2020 voter registration advantage of 685,818 has been been cut to 297,824. And now, Early Vote Action and other Republican operations — such as PA Chase — are following up to turn out the vote. 

These groups are “chasing the vote” by going door-to-door in deep red counties to motivate the newly registered Republicans as well as preexisting “low or no propensity” GOP voters to complete and mail their ballots or, in the alternative, vote in person. 

According to PA Chase’s Cliff Maloney, in 2020 there were “141,000 Republicans who requested a mail-in ballot but never sent it back.” If they had, he concludes, Trump would have carried Pennsylvania.

So it is that PA Chase, Early Vote Action, and the RNC believe that the key to victory lies in aggressively canvassing and turning out the vote in the rural red counties where Trump is popular. 

For example, PA Chase is fielding over 120 full-time “vote chasers” to knock on 500,000 doors before Election Day. They report that they have already contacted over 400,000 voters and expect to reach their goal. 

And, after the initial face-to-face visit has concluded, the vote chasers are following up to make sure that the individual contacted either votes by mail or in person.

PA Chase has posted an informative YouTube video (linked to here) that explains its persistent, up-close-and-personal style of motivating and turning out “low propensity voters who are aligned with us” but for one reason or another have failed in the past to vote. By getting them to submit mail-in ballots and avoid the vicissitudes and uncertainties of in-person Election Day voting, the chasers hope to “beat the Democrats” at their own game of retail voter turnout. 

While all of this seems promising, the proof, of course, will be in the vote counting.

Meanwhile, in a recent New York Times interview, Democrat Sen. John Fetterman characterized the level of Pennsylvanians’ enthusiasm for Trump as “astonishing.”

He said:

There’s a difference between not understanding, but also acknowledging that it exists. And anybody who spends time driving around, and you can see the intensity. It’s astonishing. I was doing an event in Indiana County. Very, very red. And there was a superstore of Trump stuff, and it was a hundred feet long, and it was dozens of T-shirts and hats and bumper stickers and all kinds of, I mean, it’s like, Where does this all come from? It’s the kind of thing that has taken on its own life. And it’s like something very special exists there. And that doesn’t mean that I admire it. It’s just — it’s real.”  (Emphasis added)

Fetterman also said that Elon Musk, who has endorsed Trump and appeared with him at a rally in Butler County (where Trump was almost assassinated), will have great appeal to Pennsylvania voters.

“And now Musk is joining him,” Fetterman said. “I mean, to a lot of people, that’s Tony Stark. That’s the world’s richest guy. And he’s obviously, and undeniably, a brilliant guy, and he’s saying ‘Hey, that’s my guy for president. That’s going to really matter.”

Fetterman said that he was “alarmed” when Musk began campaigning for Trump and added that the billionaire is a “bigger star than Trump” in “some sense.”

Which brings us to the mounting Democrat lawfare against Musk in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. 

Recently, Musk’s America PAC began handing out million-dollar checks to randomly selected registered voters in Pennsylvania and other battleground states.

Even though the money is being handed out unconditionally and with no quid pro quo requirement that the recipients vote, Musk has been warned by our corrupt U.S. Justice Department that the giveaway violates federal laws banning inducements to voters. 

But wait. As bad and ridiculous as that is, Larry Krasner, Philadelphia’s Soros-funded district attorney, has sunk even lower. 

Krasner has sued Musk and America PAC in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, alleging that the giveaways constitute an illegal lottery and a violation of consumer protection laws.

Krasner’s civil complaint states, in part, that “America PAC and Musk must be stopped immediately, before the upcoming Presidential Election on Nov. 5. That is because America PAC and Musk hatched their illegal lottery scheme to influence voters in that election.”

To put this into proper focus, District Attorney Krasner has never met a cop he didn’t despise, and, to be fair, the Philadelphia police feel the same way about him. Known as “Uncle Larry” to Philadelphia’s criminal class (who wholeheartedly praise his ongoing campaign to empty the prisons), Krasner now purports to be a champion of good government and fair elections.

Larry Krasner is essentially Kamala Harris with short hair. So it comes as no surprise that he has come forward with this baseless and absurd bit of legalized harassment to help out a kindred spirit who did her best to undermine the rule of law when she was a soft-on-crime prosecutor in California.

I will report more on Uncle Larry’s lawsuit as it plays out in court.

Also on the legal front, we have the Pennsylvania Supreme Court back to its old tricks of rewriting the Election Code as Election Day fast approaches. I will cover that development along with the reports of fraudulent mail-in ballot applications in Lancaster County and elsewhere in the next installment of this series. 

Also coming up will be an examination of Philadelphia’s “glitchy” and, according to experts, hackable electronic voting machines that will play their part in the upcoming election.

So stay tuned.

George Parry is a former federal and state prosecutor and retired trial lawyer. He blogs at knowledgeisgood.net.

READ MORE:

Report From Pennsylvania: Part One

Report From Pennsylvania: Part Two