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Much of the political world is keeping a close eye on Pennsylvania’s elections, and for good reason: Voters in the Keystone State are poised to make important decisions in competitive gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races, which are likely to have an impact on the whole country.
But as Election Day nears, there’s also realization that we’ll all have to be patient as Pennsylvania tallies its votes. It took a while to learn in the spring who won close GOP primary contests in the state, and it’s also likely to take time before we know the general election results.
It was against this backdrop that Sen. Ted Cruz asked a provocative question via Twitter yesterday:
“Why is it only Democrat blue cities that take ‘days’ to count their votes? The rest of the country manages to get it done on election night.”
As part of the missive, the Texas Republican referred readers to a New York Post article, which the senator apparently hadn’t read before promoting — since it largely answered the question Cruz raised in the tweet.
In fact, the Post’s piece noted an on-air interview between NBC News’ Chuck Todd and Leigh Chapman, Pennsylvania’s acting secretary of state, in which the official conceded the vote tallies could take “days” to complete.
The newspaper went on to note, “The acting secretary added that the state has received about half of the 1.3 million absentee and mail-in ballots requested by Pennsylvania voters. Those ballots cannot be opened until 7 a.m. on Election Day, unlike other states that ‘pre-canvass’ mail-in ballots.”
It’s an important point. Part of the problem with Cruz’s point is that it’s factually wrong: Plenty of Democratic areas are able to report election results quickly, and plenty of other areas don’t “get it done” the night of the election. Another part of the problem is practical: Some major metropolitan areas with large populations need more time to tally votes because, well, they’re major metropolitan areas with large populations.
But more specifically, the GOP senator pointed to Pennsylvania, where election officials could start counting mail-in ballots before Election Day, leading to faster turn-arounds on reporting the results, but the commonwealth’s Republican-led legislature refuses to allow that to happen.
All of which leads to a larger concern: Cruz almost certainly knows all of this — none of these details are new — and there’s reason to believe he’s failing to approach the issue in good faith.
Indeed, let’s not overlook the reason why Republicans in states like Pennsylvania insist on delaying the vote-counting process: The GOP-imposed delays fuel conspiracy theorists, who use changes in tallies as proof of nefarious election mischief.
Again, the Texas senator is not a rookie or a low-information observer unfamiliar with how elections work. But he appears to publish tweets like these to raise doubts about the integrity of the system, as part of a cynical game.
If there’s a defense for such tactics, I can’t think of it.