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US POLITICS 2024 VOTE COUNTING IN PENNSYLVANIA 60 Minutes: Pennsylvania election officials bracing for conspiracy theories, protests PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPSb4B8Dnuc Peter Burgess COMMENTARY The discussion here with the Secretary of State for Pennsylvania is disturbing, but reassuring. The more I learn about Donald Trump the more I am appalled that in the United States, such a human being can get anywhere near being elected to high office. I was born in 1940 and our family lived in a close-in suburb of London. My father was a school teacher and coach for the school rugby and cricket teams. These senior boys all went into the army, navy or air-force at the end of their schooldays. The majority of these young men died within the first year of leaving school. Not surprisngly, this had an impact on my dad ... which I got to understand many years later! People like Donald Trump have no understanding of what good people do to make life better for everyone ... he is a greedy self-centered SOB! What he will do to retake power after the Nov 5th election is unknown ... but unlikely to be friendly! Peter Burgess
Pennsylvania election officials bracing for conspiracy theories, protests 60 Minutes Oct 13, 2024 3.22M subscribers ... 166,253 views ... 3.8K likes Mail-in ballot processing rules could lead to a drawn-out vote count in the pivotal swing state of Pennsylvania. Top election official Al Schmidt is urging voter patience. '60 Minutes' is the most successful television broadcast in history. Offering hard-hitting investigative reports, interviews, feature segments and profiles of people in the news, the broadcast began in 1968 and is still a hit, over 50 seasons later, regularly making Nielsen's Top 10. Subscribe to the “60 Minutes” YouTube channel: http://bit.ly/1S7CLRu Watch full episodes: http://cbsn.ws/1Qkjo1F Get more “60 Minutes” from “60 Minutes: Overtime”: http://cbsn.ws/1KG3sdr Follow “60 Minutes” on Instagram: http://bit.ly/23Xv8Ry Like “60 Minutes” on Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1Xb1Dao Follow “60 Minutes” on Twitter: http://bit.ly/1KxUsqX Subscribe to our newsletter: http://cbsn.ws/1RqHw7T Download the CBS News app: http://cbsn.ws/1Xb1WC8 Try Paramount+ free: https://bit.ly/2OiW1kZ For video licensing inquiries, contact: licensing@veritone.com Transcript 0:01 Pennsylvania is the most pivotal Battleground in the race for the White House with its 19 electoral votes it is the state where former president Trump and vice president Harris are spending the most time and money a combined 436 million dollars between them and their allies it's also where the results could take days to count due to a state law that prevents mail and ballots from being processed early the anticipated lag which dragged out Pennsylvania's count in 20 20 now has election officials bracing for a repeat of conspiracy theories and violence at the helm lifelong Republican Al Schmidt he stood up to former president Trump and refused to join attempts to overturn his loss four years ago as Secretary of State Schmidt is doing everything he can between now and election day to assure residents their votes will count and to take on the lies Trump continues to spread about Pennsylvania the story will continue in 1:01 a moment What's the reality voter fraud is widespread voter fraud never happens there is no evidence whatsoever that voter fraud takes place uh in any way that is widespread at all if a non-citizen tried to cast a ballot would you be able to catch it that's just not something that happens because when it gets identified there are severe consequences whether it's prosecution and or deportation from the country we met Secretary of State Al Schmidt last month in the state capital in Harrisburg we have to win Pennsylvania the night before former president Trump held a rally just a few hours away where he stoked fears about voting in Pennsylvania now we have this stupid stuff where you can vote 45 days early I wonder what the hell happens during that 45 let's move uh the see 2:00 these votes who got about a million votes and then let's move them we're fixing have you heard what the former president said last night at his rally here in Pennsylvania no he seems to be saying that there is cheating going on with mail and ballots here there is not 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 once had his own doubts about election security in the last before becoming Secretary of State he spent a decade on Philadelphia's Board of Elections where he investigated hundreds of claims of voter fraud and changed his mind whenever it has occurred however rarely it's to affect some very down ticket race that is decided by a handful of votes it's not to decide who the president of the United States is or who the governor is or who a senator is or anything else like that as secretary of State Schmidt 3:01 is visiting each of Pennsylvania's 67 counties are you registered to vote in Pennsylvania your voice matters part Road Show part public relations tour spreading the gospel of election security election day is November 5th you can vote by mail in advance including a stop at a fair in deep red Columbia County nice to meet you he spent more than 35 minutes trying to convince these local Republicans that they can trust the voting system like dead people voting in Philadelphia you have a public record of when somebody died you have a public record of when they cast their vote they have found cases where quote dead people have voted the only cases that I've encountered are when a voter has cast their ballot by mail and then passed away in between mailing and their vote and their vote being counted and you can see that you know former president Trump's got the rallies and he's got the microphone and he's got the audiences and he can spread 4:01 his message to thousands if not millions of people and you're here at the county fair and you've got a stand and you're doing it one to three voters at a time yes you're one one in a timing it so you kind of can't compete but it's also important to have that one-in-one contact to go to uh a County Fair uh to engage with people to answer their questions I love you Philly Democratic governor Josh Shapiro told us that choosing Al Schmidt a lifelong Republican as his first cabinet pick last year was intended to send a clear message of all the cabinet appointments that you could have made first why was it Al Schmidt I made a commitment during my campaign that I was going to appoint a pro-democracy secretary of state what were your marching orders to him do your job make it so legal eligible voters have access to The Ballot Box and we again have a 5:01 free and fair safe and secure election when you think about secretaries of State the role you tend to think that it respectfully is a boring job a mundane job an administrative job how's that working out for you it is I mean elections should be um not something to dread they should be something to celebrate and voters should feel confident that if they cast their vote whether it's by mail or in person on Election Day that their vote is going to be counted so in 2020 it took four days to call the election in Pennsylvania what took so long when you have half of your voters vote by mail like we did in 2020 um Counting those votes takes time we saw for ourselves at a ballot intake Center in Chester County outside Philadelphia so this is the actual envelope and these where the ball are returned in and this is a sample correct 6:01 elections administrator Karen Barum showed us how each ballot arrives inside two different envelopes 94 ballots in one tray processing them is a tedious task which Under Pennsylvania law cannot start until 700 a.m. on Election Day so when we do open it there is another envelope so hypothetically speaking if we have 100,000 mail and ballots we have to deal with double the amount of envelopes which is a a a long process and then ballot comes out and you can't count it folded like that correct we will need to have a whole different team unfold them backfold them to get the creases out as good as we can how long does it take to process each ballot several minutes it's not it's not like done in a sec that window of time between the polls closing and races being called I think has shown to be a real uh vulnerability where people seeking to uh undermine confidence in 7:01 those results if they're going to lose um uh have have uh really exploited those four days allowed the big lie to take off and that's when you start hearing about truckloads of ballots and that's when you start hearing about you know zombie voters and that's when all this other stuff really starts pouring in there have been widespread calls to bring Pennsylvania in line with the majority of other states where election work ERS get a head start on opening envelopes and flattening ballots ahead of election day why hasn't that changed youve had four years Pennsylvania Pennsylvania is unique in that we have a divided legislature we have a democratic house and a Republican Senate so getting anything done related to election reform is has certainly been a challenge the message is what be patient with Pennsylvania the message is please be patient our counties are working night and day to count their voters votes 8:02 they're doing so as quickly as they can and with Integrity our job is to make sure we are constantly just providing the truth to voters to be a for secretary Schmid getting out the message can mean late nights answering questions about the electoral process in granular detail it takes time to count millions of votes and it's not as we saw at this Law School in Harrisburg we're much better prepared today four years later than we were he's teamed up with fellow Republican former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett the former president has a refrain at his rallies he says Democrats rigged the election in 2020 and he's not going to let them get away with it this year evidence bring it any us attorney any district attorney bring the evidence and show them not what you want you've got to convince a prosecutor in a court you've got polls that show show some 34% of Americans nearly 70% of 9:02 Republicans who still to this day believe that Joe Biden didn't win the 20120 election but I can't change that because they believe it because they've heard it so many times you've said there's a huge amount of people in the middle that can be influenced by the extremes is that who you're trying to educate yes the extremes were not going to change but right here and in a close election that's very important we won Pennsylvania twice twice we won it twice we did much better the second time than we did the first time he continues to say that he won Pennsylvania twice Donald Trump won in 2016 by about 44,000 votes and Donald Trump lost in 2020 by about 80,000 votes I understand that he's a sore loser I understand that he wished he would have won in 2020 but attacking this system made up of our 10:00 neighbors from communities all across Pennsylvania Republican and Democrat alike is not the answer former president Trump is refusing to commit to accepting the results if he loses if he does refuse what happens here in Pennsylvania what does that look like I think it can look unfortunately like what it looked like in 2020 with violence in our communities with threats to public officials good public officials like Al Schmidt and the Republican and Democratic Clerks of Elections am I worried about that am I concerned about that of course I am in 2020 as the presidential election hung in the balance all eyes were on the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia outside police and protesters surrounded the building while inside Al Schmid oversaw the counting of a record 375,000 mail in ballots most of them from democratic voters we're winning 11:01 Pennsylvania by a tremendous amount of hours after the polls closed then president Trump demanded the counting stop we don't want them to find any ballots at 4:00 in the morning and add them to the list okay we were working day and night there was one television that was working and I happened to be passing it when uh when I heard that speech so immediately brought together our Communications team to begin um through social media platforms assuring the rest of the world whose eyes were on Pennsylvania that our vote counting was going to continue but at that point you've got the president of the United States saying stop the count did you ever feel like you had to stop the count no not for a second after 4 days the race in Pennsylvania was finally called for Joe Biden and with that he won the White House for former president Trump went 12:00 after Al Schmidt by name on Twitter and violent threats from Trump's supporters followed do you remember the first threat that made you go I got to take this one seriously there were uh threats early on that were pretty generic in nature but um as days went on they they became a lot more specific providing my address um graphic descriptions of you know what they would do um to my family they used a picture of your house at one point I understand listed your children's names repeatedly you had to move your family out of your house for safety yes they had to to relocate for a period and we had um uh security around the clock for many months given all the threats that you faced personally I've got to ask why you would agree to take this job well everything is on the line our entire system of government our country as it was founded is on the line

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