Elections
PA’s head of elections: ‘We’re coming in the home stretch here’
Pennsylvania’s chief election official has suggested that the “overwhelming majority of ballots” have already been counted but that more need to be tallied in order to get a clearer sense of who the winner in the state is.
Kathy Boockvar, the Pennsylvania Sec. of State, elaborated on the progress made with the vote count so far at a late Thursday afternoon press conference in Harrisburg, saying that: “We’re coming in the home stretch here.”
“What’s happening now is having enough ballots counted to actually see who the winner is,” she said, adding, “the farther apart [the margin] is, the easier it is to tell.”
Link to another press conference video clip here.
“So, it’s very close in Pennsylvania,” Boockvar continued, “there’s no question. And so that means it’s going to take longer to actually see who the winner is. But I can tell you that there are several hundred thousand ballots remaining to be counted. You can track all that—what counties it remains in—look at our website and you’ll be able to see how we get to the conclusion.”
As for when she believes some results will be revealed, while also emphasizing that the full election results won’t be officially certified until 20 days after the election, she says their ahead of schedule.
“What I’ve said all along is that the overwhelming majority of ballots will be counted by Friday,” she said.
Continuing, she said, “I still think that we are ahead of schedule—” but then she corrected herself and added that “we actually already have counted the overwhelming majority of ballots, but, because it’s a close race, it’s not quite clear yet who the winner is.”
At the time of publication, President Trump has a slight lead over former Vice President Joe Biden, but Biden is closing the gap between them as more ballots are counted.
You can follow Douglas Braff on Twitter @Douglas_P_Braff.
After hours of debate, the House voted Wednesday night to approve a bipartisan debt-ceiling deal, taking a step toward averting a default on U.S. debt. The measure passed with 314 members voting in favor and 117 members voting in opposition. 149 Republicans and 165 Democrats voted to approve the bill, while 71 Republicans and 46 Democrats voted against it.
National Review writes the measure’s passage secures “a victory for House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who managed to keep his caucus together despite a challenge from House Freedom Caucus members intent on securing greater spending concessions from the Biden White House.”
The bill will now head to the Senate. McCarthy said the measure is the “largest spending cut that Congress has ever voted for,” but faced opposition from members of his caucus who believe the deal “didn’t go far enough in restoring pre-Covid spending levels.”
In his speech on the House floor Wednesday before the vote, McCarthy pleaded with his colleagues to support what he had bargained for with Biden:
“They demanded a clean debt limit, which really means they spend more and you pay more in taxes. House Republicans said ‘no’,” McCarthy said.“Over the past four months, we fought hard to change how Washington works. We stopped the Democrats from writing a blank check after the largest spending binge in American history… The Fiscal Responsibility Act is the biggest spending cut in American history.”
National Review reports:
The agreement suspends the nation’s $31.4 trillion debt limit through January 1, 2025, and caps spending in the 2024 and 2025 budgets.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that the deal will reduce budget deficits by about $1.5 trillion between 2023 and 2033. Director of the CBO Phillip Swagel projected that there would be reductions in discretionary outlays of $1.3 trillion over the 2024–2033 period. Mandatory spending would decrease by $10 billion, revenues would decrease by $2 billion over the same period, and the interest on the public debt would decline by $188 billion.
Biden warned of the consequences of default, saying what would follow would include an economic recession, devastated retirement accounts, and millions of jobs lost.
“I made clear from the start of negotiations that the only path forward was a bipartisan budget agreement,” explained Biden on Twitter. “No one got everything they wanted. But that’s the responsibility of governing.”
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