Topline

Former President Donald Trump and his supporters—including billionaire Elon Musk—have spread claims about election irregularities and fraud in Pennsylvania despite officials saying their claims have no merit, as the ex-president begins sowing distrust in the election results as polls suggest he’s virtually tied with Vice President Kamala Harris.

Key Facts

Voter Registrations In Lancaster, York And Other Counties

Trump and other Republicans have made claims of voter fraud based on instances in multiple counties in which election officials received unusually large groups of voter registration applications, which were reviewed and sent to district attorney’s offices to investigate potential fraud. Lancaster County reported “hundreds” of fraudulent applications were sent to investigators and York County reported approximately a quarter of the 3,000 registration applications it received in bulk were declined and are undergoing further review. Officials also reported irregular applications in Monroe County, though election officials in Luzerne County, where some last-minute application forms were also flagged, said after reviewing the applications that none were fraudulent. While Trump and other Republicans have held up these instances as evidence of voter fraud, election officials told The Washington Post they were more likely the “sloppy work of a paid canvasser trying to meet a quota” rather than a malicious instance of fraud. Since the irregularities were only reported in voter registration applications, there is also no impact on any actual ballots or votes.

Bucks County Cutting Off Line To Vote

The Trump campaign and its allies, including running mate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, have pushed claims that voters were denied the opportunity to vote in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, despite being in line before voting ended for the day, with Vance amplifying claims that Democrat-allied “voter protection” workers were cutting off the line. The Trump campaign ultimately filed a lawsuit that resulted in early voting being extended in the county until Friday. Bucks County has pushed back against the suggestions that voters were intentionally being stopped from voting and cut off in line, saying on Monday, “Contrary to what is being depicted on social media, if you are in line by 5 p.m. for an on-demand mail-in ballot application, you will have the opportunity to submit your application for a mail-in ballot.” (The state does not have traditional early voting, but allows voters to request and submit mail ballots in person.) The county did acknowledge there was a “miscommunication” that meant “individuals in line to apply for an on-demand mail-in ballot were briefly told they could not be accommodated,” but added that those voters “were given the opportunity to submit mail-in ballot applications today.”

Woman Arrested In Delaware County

The Trump campaign claimed in a campaign email Monday that a woman in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, was arrested “for fighting voter suppression” and “encouraging people to stay in line and vote.” Delaware County responded in a statement, reported by ABC News, saying the woman in question was being “disruptive, belligerent, and attempting to influence voters waiting in line,” and remained in the polling place’s lobby for two hours and “approached various individuals” but did not get in line to vote herself. Police apprehended the woman and asked her to leave after voters complained, county officials said, and first “provided her with verbal guidance on appropriate behavior and allowed her to remain in the lobby.” After additional complaints were lodged against the woman and she refused to leave, she was “briefly detained, and was issued a citation for disorderly conduct,” a county spokesperson told ABC News.

Ballot Delivery In Northampton County

A viral video posted on X Monday purporting to show a man dropping off an “obscene amount of ballots” in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, actually depicted a postal worker delivering ballots to the local elections office, NBC News confirmed. The video, which was shared by right-wing influencers including Alex Jones, has led to the postal worker getting harassed, Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure told NBC, adding, “I hope if you do a story that the story will be that this is incredibly stupid election misinformation … And, you know, stop it.”

Ballots Ripped Up In Bucks County

After a video went viral that was purporting to show ballots being ripped up in Bucks County, the FBI, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement saying they had determined “Russian actors manufactured and amplified” the video, describing it as “part of Moscow’s broader effort to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the US election and stoke divisions among Americans.” The video has been attributed to Russian disinformation team Storm-1516, NBC reports. Local prosecutors also separately debunked the video, similarly “conclud[ing]

that this video was fabricated in an attempt to undermine confidence in the upcoming election.”

Allegheny County Voters Cutting Lines

Trump supporters complained about noncitizens allegedly being allowed to vote in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, after social media posts claimed buses of non-English speakers arrived at a polling place and those voters cut other people in line. Allegheny County issued a statement saying a video posted on social media only showed a “brief conversation between voters, their translators, and a County employee,” after which elderly and disabled voters in the group were allowed to sit down as they waited to vote while able-bodied members of the group went to the back of the line. Sam DeMarco, a local council member who supports Trump, shared the county’s statement, and local outlet TribLive reports that he was told by county lawyers the voters at issue are U.S. citizens who are members of the local Nepalese and Bhutanese community. “These are members of the refugee community, and they are registered to vote in Allegheny County,” DeMarco said, and Bhutanese Community Association of Pittsburgh director Khara Timsina told TribLive the voters became citizens around 2013 and 2014. While Republicans have made false claims about noncitizens voting in the November election, in practice noncitizen voting is extremely rare, with one study finding only 0.0001% of ballots cast in 2016 across 12 states were unlawful votes by noncitizens.

What To Watch For

Trump and his supporters are likely to continue spreading false claims of fraud through and after Election Day. Those claims are likely to spread more rapidly and unchecked on X, CNN notes, where Musk has allowed misinformation and disinformation to spread without the moderation measures that other social platforms have taken—and repeatedly spread the false claims himself. “Elon Musk is a huge problem,” an unnamed Pennsylvania official told CNN. (Musk has not yet responded to a request for comment.) Pennsylvania is one of the states that’s likely to take longer to report election results, due to laws in the state that only allow election workers to start processing ballots on Election Day. That could allow misinformation to further spread while ballots are being counted, as happened in 2020. Trump also filed numerous lawsuits in the state in 2020 taking issue with election processes and falsely alleging fraud—nearly all of which failed, save for one minor lawsuit affecting only a small number of votes—which may happen again this year. Schmidt said Thursday that while the final timing of the election results will depend on how close the race is—and final results will not be available by Election Day—the state has taken steps since 2020 to try and speed up the ballot counting process, like giving counties the funds to invest in more resources for counting. Counties will also now be required to report how many ballots are still left to count, which will help combat claims of ballots being “found” at the last minute that proliferated during the 2020 election.

Contra

While Trump has pointed to issues like the allegedly fraudulent voter registrations as being evidence of the election being fraudulent and rigged against him, election officials told the Post that the fact the registrations were flagged actually shows the guardrails that are in place to catch and prevent election fraud are working as they should. Nina Jancowitz, CEO of anti-disinformation group American Sunlight Project, also noted to CNN that the outsized role Musk is playing in the election and him using X to freely spread false information “is far closer to election interference than any of the allegations that conservatives have made against social media platforms from 2016 to 2022.”

Further Reading

Pennsylvania 2024 Trump-Harris Polls: Race Virtually Tied In 7 New Surveys Of Vital Battleground (Forbes)

Trump alleges fraud in Pennsylvania, but officials say the election is secure (Washington Post)

Election officials are outmatched by Elon Musk’s misinformation machine (CNN)

‘Big lie’ 2.0: How Trump’s false claims about noncitizens voting lay the groundwork to undermine the election (NBC News)

Pennsylvania officials reject viral claim about illegal voters (BBC)