Trump beat Hillary Clinton by more than 40,000 votes in Pennsylvania on his way to winning the presidency in 2016, but native Scrantonian Joe Biden edged Trump by about 80,000 votes in the state four years ago.

Harris will be holding a rally in Erie, a Democratic majority city of about 94,000 people bordered by suburbs and rural areas with significant numbers of Republicans. Erie County is often cited as one of the state’s reliable bellwether regions, where the electorate has a decidedly moderate voting record. Trump visited Erie on Sept. 29.

Trump plans a town hall Monday at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center and Fairgrounds in suburban Oaks, hoping to drive up turnout among his supporters.

Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes, the most of any swing state, have long made it a center of presidential electioneering. Democrats have won three straight elections for governor and both current U.S. senators are Democrats, but its legislature is closely divided and both parties have had recent success in statewide contests.

Republican Al Schmidt, Pennsylvania’s top election official, has crisscrossed his state in a campaign to spread the gospel of election security, four years after former President Donald Trump disputed the ballot count.

The swing state, with its 19 electoral votes, is critical to the campaigns of both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. It’s also a state with a law that prevents the early processing of mail-in ballots, which dragged out the state’s count in 2020. The anticipated lag this year has election officials bracing for conspiracy theories, protests and violence.

“That window of time between the polls closing and races being called, I think, has shown to be a real vulnerability, where people seeking to undermine confidence in those results if they’re going to lose have really exploited,” Schmidt said. 

Pennsylvania’s mail-in ballot process

Unlike many other states, Pennsylvania can only begin processing mail-in ballots on the morning of Election Day. 

It took four days to call the election in Pennsylvania in 2020. As those days passed, leaving the 2020 election results hanging in the balance, all eyes were on the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. Police and protesters were outside while Schmidt and his fellow members of the Board of Elections oversaw the counting of a record 375,000 mail-in ballots, most of them from Democratic voters.

“When you have half of your voters vote by mail, like we did in 2020, counting those votes takes time,” Schmidt said.

At a ballot intake center in Chester County, elections administrator Karen Barsoum showed the two different envelopes each mail-in ballot arrives in.

“So, hypothetically speaking, if we have 100,000 mail-in ballots, we have to deal with double the amount of the envelopes, which is a long process,” Barsoum said. 

Then the ballot comes out and it needs to be unfolded and flattened out to remove creases. In all, it takes several minutes to process each mail-in ballot. 

Conspiracy theories take off 

Hours after the polls closed in 2020, then President Trump demanded the counting stop. Schmidt happened to be passing by a TV and heard Trump’s speech.

“We don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list, OK?” Trump said at the time.

Schmidt brought together his communications team so they could reassure voters that the count would continue. Allegations of fraud spread as the mail-in ballots were counted.

“That’s when you start hearing about truckloads of ballots. And that’s when you start hearing about, you know, zombie voters,” Schmidt said. “That’s when all this other stuff really starts pouring in.”

At the end of Pennsylvania’s days-long count, the state was called for Joe Biden and, with that, he won the White House. But Trump continues to say that he won Pennsylvania in both 2016 — when he won by about 44,000 votes — and in 2020, when he lost by about 80,000 votes. 

“I understand that he’s a sore loser,” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said. “I understand that he wished he would have won in 2020. But attacking this system made up of our neighbors from communities all across Pennsylvania, Republican and Democrat alike, is not the answer.”

Calls for reform, patience and faith 

In the wake of those four days in 2020, there were widespread calls to bring Pennsylvania in line with the majority of other states, where election workers get a head start on opening envelopes and flattening mail-in ballots ahead of Election Day. 

“Pennsylvania’s unique in that we have a divided legislature. We have a Democratic House and a Republican Senate,” Schmidt said. “So getting anything done related to election reform has certainly been a challenge.”

He has urged people to be patient with Pennsylvania. 

“Our counties are working night and day to count their voters’ votes,” Schmidt said. “They’re doing so as quickly as they can, and with integrity.”

In the leadup to Election Day, Schmidt is doing everything he can to take on the fears Trump continues to spread about Pennsylvania and to assure residents their votes will count.

“Elections in Pennsylvania have never been more safe and secure with a voter verified paper ballot record of every vote that’s cast, whether you vote in person on Election Day or you vote by mail,” Schmidt said.

Shapiro appointed Schmidt, who previously worked for a decade on Philadelphia’s Board of Elections, to the role of secretary of state last year. The governor was succinct when asked what Schmidt’s marching orders were.

“Do your job,” Shapiro said he told Schmidt. “Make it so legal, eligible voters have access to the ballot box and that we again have a free and fair, safe and secure election.”

Schmidt is now visiting each of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties and meeting with voters. At a fair in deep red Columbia County, Schmidt spent more than 35 minutes trying to convince local Republicans that they can trust the voting system.

“Everything is on the line”

A recent poll found around a third of Americans – and nearly 70% of Republicans – still believe Biden didn’t legitimately win the 2020 election. Trump has refused to commit to accepting the results if he loses in November. If that happens, it could cause violence in the state, Shapiro said. It could also mean election officials face threats from Trump supporters.

“Am I worried about that? Am I concerned about that? Of course I am,” Shapiro said. 

Schmidt was threatened by Trump supporters after the 2020 vote when Trump called him out by name in a Twitter post. 

“There were threats early on that were pretty generic in nature,” Schmidt said. “As days went on, they became a lot more specific.”

Those threatening him put out his address and graphically described what they would do to his family, Schmidt said. A picture of his home was shared and his children’s names were listed repeatedly. Schmidt temporarily moved his family for their safety. There was round-the-clock security for months. 

Still, Schmidt is sticking with his job. 

“Everything is on the line,” he said. “Our entire system of government, our country as it was founded, is on the line.”

Manufacturing, immigration, crime, the economy, and alleged election fraud in 2020 dominated JD Vance’s Saturday two speeches in Pennsylvania, just weeks out from the election.

Speaking at a Saturday afternoon rally in Johnstown, the Ohio Senator and Republican vice-presidential candidate spoke for 40 minutes, in what has become a routine stop on the campaign trail. The Keystone State is a vital part of both candidates’ strategy to win the White House.

Johnstown is a small city of less than 20,000 inhabitants which has suffered decades of industrial decline following the closure of its steel mills and coal mines.

It has featured on the campaign trails of both presidential candidates as well as Vance. Vice President Kamala Harris visited some local businesses there in September, and Donald Trump held a rally in the city in August.

The repeated visits are emblematic to of the critical role Rust Belt cities, which lost most of their manufacturing economies decades ago, played in electing Trump in 2016, on his America-first manufacturing platform.

They were then crucial in electing President Joe Biden, who in 2020 campaigned as a pro-union, pro-manufacturing candidate who came from coal-mining Scranton, Pennsylvania.

In his 40-minute speech, Vance addressed Johnstown’s industrial heritage, casting himself and Trump as the candidates who would deport millions of “illegal aliens” to secure its economic future, and casting Harris as a candidate who would do nothing to prevent its decline.

He also continued to suggest that the 2020 election was unfair, following on from his Friday New York Times interview, in which he declined five times to acknowledge that Trump lost the election to Biden.

Later in the afternoon, he held a town-hall style rally in Reading, in eastern Pennsylvania, where he took questions from the audience and addressed the importance of voter turnout, home ownership, energy costs, and the need to “drain the swamp” of allegedly corrupt officials in the FBI and Justice Department.

Here five key takeaways from the events.

Capitol Rioters Were “Knuckleheads” and Trump Is Not To Blame

A reporter asked Vance whether he condemned the riot at on January 6, 2021, where Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in order to disrupt the certification of Biden’s victory.

In response, Vance said he did condemn the riot, but he denied that Trump was responsible for the actions of the rioters and insisted that there was a “peaceful transfer of power” in 2020.

“Donald Trump asked people to protest peacefully,” Vance said. “He had every right to encourage people to protest peacefully, and the fact that a few knuckleheads went off and did something they shouldn’t do, that’s not on him; that’s on them, that’s on them.”

This answer diverges slightly from Trump’s own view, which has repeatedly been the rioters, over 1,200 of whom have been criminally charged, were not “knuckleheads,” but rather were “patriots.”

He has insisted he would pardon them if elected to a second term. However, like Vance, Trump denied any involvement in the riot, stating during his September debate with Harris, “That had nothing to do with me.”

Trump’s alleged involvement in the lead-up to the riot is subject to an ongoing federal criminal case in Washington D.C., which is currently going through pretrial motions.

Trump and Vance Would Clean House at the FBI and the DOJ

Vance told a story about an FBI field agent who he said told him that the agency’s leadership is “so broken.”

“You’ve got to clean house, and that’s what we’re going to do,” Vance said. “We’re going to fire the people who are responsible for the corruption of our Department of Justice.

“Trump got famous firing people and it’s funny, you know, that’s the kind of person you actually want cleaning house in Washington D.C.”

Newsweek has contacted the Department of Justice and the FBI via email for comment.

Trump and other Republicans have accused the Justice Department of being corrupt for bringing charges against the former president, and the FBI of engaging in numerous alleged politically motivated conspiracies against Trump and other conservatives.

Lower Housing Costs by Deregulating, Drilling, and Deporting

In response to a question about the increasing unaffordability of housing, Vance listed some of Trump’s economic policies which involve removing regulations, drilling for more oil, and deporting migrants.

Repeating the slogan, “drill baby, drill,” Vance argued that by increasing oil production, energy costs would decrease, which would lead to lower housing costs.

He also argued that excessive regulation was holding back housing development, and that American citizens were suffering due to having to compete with undocumented immigrants in the housing market.

“Unless we have American homes (…) going to American citizens, we are never going to make the American dream of home ownership affordable,” Vance said.

The U.S. Would Currently Lose a War With China

Vance argued that China would be able to win a war with the U.S. due to its superior manufacturing capacity.

“God forbid, let’s say we get into a war with China, and I certainly hope that doesn’t happen, but those commercial ships [sic] are going to start building warships very quickly,” Vance said.

“And this is the secret of why did we win the Second World War? Well of course we had the bravest people, and we had the best troops, but we had the world’s industrial might. No one could compete with America’s manufacturing sector.”

Vance argued that creating a regulatory environment which made it easier for businesses to manufacture in America was therefore not just economically essential, but also in the country’s national security interests.

Republicans Are Ahead in Voter Registrations in Pennsylvania

Vance said that Pennsylvania Republicans are “knocking it out of the park” in relation to voter registrations.

“We are actually tracking some of this registration stuff,” Vance said. “Things are moving in the right direction and that’s a very good thing.”

This year has seen rising Republican registrations in the Keystone State. Spotlight PA reported in September that in 2024, the Democrats have had their weakest voter registration advantage compared to Republicans in decades

As of September 16, Democrats made up 44 percent of registered voters in the commonwealth, down from a 2009 high of 51.2 percent, while Republicans were at 40.2 percent, up from 36.9 percent in 2009. Unaffiliated and third-party voters have boosted their numbers even more, from 11.9 percent in 2009 to 15.7 percent.

Newsweek has contacted the Harris and Trump campaigns via email for comment.