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Comment by blackeyeblitzar | Hacker News Reader

I am going to take a guess as to what the GP was referring to: In 2020, Pennsylvania was one of the states that made many changes to how their elections work under the guise of the pandemic. But they changed their rules at the last minute once more in a way that may have altered Pennsylvania’s outcomes.

Existing state law meant ballots had to be received by 8 p.m. on Election Day in order to be counted. The Democratic Party filed a lawsuit to extend that deadline and the Pennsylvania state Supreme Court (not SCOTUS) made a highly controversial ruling that extended the deadline to the following Friday. This extension would have helped Biden (given his party filed the lawsuit to force the change), and given they barely won the state (Biden had 50.01%), there is a good chance it affected the outcome.

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Are you referring to Republican Party of Pennsylvania v. Boockvar over the 3 day extension of the received date? Those ballots were collected separately but there were less than 10k of them so even if they’d been 100% Biden voters they wouldn’t have affected the outcome of a race which Biden won by 80k votes.

Yeah, and if you look at my comments, I agree that Biden won the race as run. I just question the entire legitimacy of counting any of the votes in a rogue election. I don't think rogue elections should happen. The moral hazard is too great, and it's a direct attack on democratic processes.

Yes, my point is that “rogue election” as a term is using the language of deniers. Every election has mistakes, and the pandemic especially created novel challenges, but that’s a strong term to use if the best you can say is that a statistically insignificant number of ballots were challenged with no evidence of misconduct.

Mistakes sure. This was intentionally done though.

It's a strong term but there is no denial. I'm not even sure why people are so against calling out the obvious. Biden probably would have won a legitimate contest

What was intentionally done? Every election has ballots received late but that’s almost always human error, not someone trying to cheat, and in this case there’s been no evidence of that despite a massive effort looking for anything amiss.

> Biden probably would have won a legitimate contest

That’s why you’re getting pushback: he did a legitimate contest. The language you’ve been using has implied otherwise, which is implicitly throwing in with the convicted fraudsters.

I am referring to a case filed by the Democratic party of Pennsylvania (not republicans), and I don’t recall the numbers off the top of my head but when it was in the news it was expected that the case would affect a few million votes from mail in ballots that had not yet been returned. Mail in ballots were mostly requested by Democratic voters. The ruling also had some other changes that I can’t recall. Also I forgot to mention that state supreme court deciding the case had a Democratic supermajority.

To me this situation felt like a manipulation of the election process that is outside of the norms, especially for it to happen so late. That was a few years ago but it is an example situation that causes many to still feel the election was “stolen”. I think lots of people use that term to also include actions that are technically legal but feel unfair.

Try to find a reference. The date component makes it sound like Pennsylvania Democratic Party v. Boockvar, whose decision lead to both the case I mentioned and SCOTUS requiring such ballots to be held separately so they could be removed based on the decision of that case. The major discrepancy is that you’re talking millions and that only affected thousands.

> there is a good chance it affected the outcome

Of the state? Maybe. Of the election? No. Biden won 306 to 232 [1]. Pennsylvania only has 19 EVs. It wasn’t the tipping-point state.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_president...

I meant the state, although a sister comment to yours (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42032946) claims the affected number of ballots was too small (which doesn’t match my recollection but sharing it here for balance). Regardless - although I am open to the possibility of various issues or flaws in various states adding up to something more, I personally am confident Biden won the election, for what it’s worth. I do have my doubts about the overall process though - voting is just the very end step, but there are things that happen before that can skew election results (media bias, social media censorship, whatever).

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