after running for 2 weeks straight 24/7. And now I'm withdrawal.

You deserve some time off. Well done, and thank you!

I am just pissed off at the Inquirer at the moment. I want a RETRACTION (they had 2 more "low turnout" bullshit articles)!!!!!

We just surpassed the 2008 vote for Obama - so far by almost 10,000 votes.

They are pretty much done (needs to be completed/certified statewide by 11/23/20).

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

county's turnout of 80%.

is 40,000 LESS than the number of children in the Philly School System.

I was looking at GOP Elections Commissioner Al Schmidt's tweets and he had some nice little graphics -

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used to talk about NE Phila ceceding from the City of Phila. But if that had happed, the City of NE Philadelphia would have automatically have become the 2nd largest city in the state. Even if divided into 3rds, Phila would still be the 1st, 2nd and 3rd biggest cities in the state.

I think most Pennsylvanians simply have no idea of the size of Phila and its relationship to the rest of the state. Phila has not only the largest school district by far, but is around the 18th largest school district in the entire country! It's metro ecomony is estimated to be the 8th largest metro economy in the US! It is undeniably the engine that powers our state.

The point of the above, though, is to say that if Philadelphians voted at the same percentage of the smaller counties, Dems would never lose a state-wide or national election. That is your challenge.

distribution fiasco as well as ballots thrown out beyond the address/date issue that was subject to one of the lawsuits - i.e., the feared "naked ballots".

Still, if you look at the wards where the turnout was lowest, they are the poorest and often most heavily Hispanic sections of the city, predominately in North Philly, so those areas will always be a challenge no matter what city you are in. Since we have had almost 2000 who have died from coronavirus and have almost 900 in the hospital at the moment, I also wouldn't be surprised that you have people who had registered but were too sick to vote or who have died.

The more interesting stat is that the "mail-in" vs the "in person" voting was actually almost equal, despite the 7/8 - 1 margin of Democrats to Republicans here, so the "only/mainly Democrats voted in person assertion" didn't apply here. I know a few friends and former co-workers (Democrats) who insisted that they were going to vote in person and not trust the mail or even the drop boxes! Both of my sisters voted in person in Montco and Delco and for the same reason - neither trusted USPS and their drop box locations were more remote to them than the ones here in Philly.

can elect Dems statewide if turnout approached the same level as in the smaller, more homogeneous counties like mine.

I am happy turnout was in the high 60s in Phila. It and the 'burbs certainly put Biden over the top in the state.

BTW, I also voted in person on election day just because I like going to the poll, but also to be 100% sure my vote was cast and counted.

that were first used in the GE in 2019. IMHO they were horrible and when I saw the no-excuse absentee option become available, I jumped right on it. I don't trust any ES&S machine and I have a concern about the thermal paper used as the "blank" ballot for those machines that will be the paper trail of the selections. Thermal paper is notorious for fading. I'd prefer something like the mail-ins --heavy stock paper with fill-in-the-oval selections, and that gets fed into a scanner.

Because of the pandemic, we were down almost 100 polling locations too (normally have over 800), although that was worlds better than the 150 total that were all they could staff back during the primary.

But I would disagree about comparing this year with other years because it is obvious that in past years, the turnout across the state hasn't been robust either. The fact that they are calling this year a "record turnout" basically indicates that. I have posted many times over the years about the "lazy suburbs" where many there are not voting and people keep pointing at the city to save them. With the number of protests that went on all summer -notably in the 'burbs, which was amazing to me - that sortof became an indicator that people were finally waking up and looking at what was at stake!

If anything, I am hoping that the availability of those mail-ins will at least help to keep the state-wide turnout up a few notches as it is certainly convenient!