With 13 days left until the US election on November 5th, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump focused on two key swing states on Wednesday, October 23rd: Pennsylvania and Georgia.
Pennsylvania, among the seven battleground states, has the largest population and is considered the state most likely to determine which presidential candidate will ultimately emerge victorious.
In addition, a new study released by Microsoft on Wednesday indicated that a large army of social media bots controlled by the Chinese Communist Party are attempting to influence the US election. They are primarily targeting voters in Alabama, Texas, and Tennessee while also disparaging federal lawmakers like Marco Rubio who oppose the CCP’s atrocities.
According to data from the University of Florida Election Lab, over 23 million American voters have already cast their ballots through early in-person voting or mail-in ballots.
Trump has shifted his strategy this year, encouraging his supporters to vote early, a change from his stance in 2020 against early in-person and mail-in voting. He hopes that this early voting surge can address the “technical mechanical issues” that led to his losses in the 2020 presidential election and the 2022 midterms.
Several states, including battleground states like North Carolina and Georgia, set record-breaking numbers on their respective first days of early voting.
Trump plans to make two stops in Georgia, starting with a “Believers and Ballots” town hall event in Zebulon with Georgia’s Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones in attendance. In recent days, he has been reaching out to evangelical Christian voters, a group that strongly supported him in the 2016 and 2020 elections.
Afterward, a campaign rally in Duluth will feature former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson and former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joining Trump.
Harris, on the other hand, will take part in a town hall event in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, where she will field questions from voters with CNN anchor Anderson Cooper moderating.
Georgia’s Secretary of State, Republican Brad Raffensperger, announced during a press conference on Wednesday that an audit in the state found that out of 400,000 registered voters in Georgia, fewer than one was a non-citizen. Of over 8.2 million registered voters, only 20 were non-citizens.
Raffensperger called it the most comprehensive citizenship check in Georgia’s history and possibly the most thorough in US history. The 20 non-citizens’ registrations have since been canceled, and they could face criminal charges.
Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer in Raffensperger’s office, explained that these 20 individuals were identified through the submission of sworn affidavits to evade jury duty.
While the exact timing of election results remains uncertain, it depends on various factors. Each state has different procedures in handling elections, ranging from weeks of early voting to stringent voter identification laws, leading to potential delays.
Key battleground states contested by Trump and Harris, such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, are only permitted to begin processing absentee and mail-in ballots on Election Day, which is expected to slow down the vote count.
(*This article references relevant articles from Reuters and USA Today)