“More than two years after the last ballot was cast in the 2020 election, Lycoming County plans to recount all presidential votes by hand — an extraordinary step no other Pennsylvania county has taken,” Raw Story reported (here) on Monday, January 9, 2023, adding, “County commissioners ordered the recount under pressure from activists associated with an election conspiracy group.”
Lycoming County (profile here) is an Appalachia distressed area (details here) on the fringes of coal country (map here) with higher than average unemployment (chart here). This is Trump country; he got 35,627 votes (70.46%) to 13,020 for Clinton (25.75%) in 2016 (see results here), and 41,462 votes (69.97%) to 16,971 for Biden (28.64%) in 2020 (see results here). The higher percentage for Biden came mostly at the expense of the Libertarian Party (2.59% in 2016 vs. 1.39% in 2020).
Election denial is strong here, and the local Trumpers couldn’t believe Trump’s tally shrank by a whopping 0.49% over his four tumultuous years in office, or even more suspiciously, that the Democratic share grew by an incredible 2.89% (of whom 1.2% came from ex-Libertarians).
Actually, what really seems to have set them off is that Biden’s total jumped 30% for Clinton’s, whereas Trump’s jumped only half that. Turnout was higher in 2020, and it’s also possible that a close Senate race and a contentious governor’s race brought more people, especially Democrats, to the polls.
Smelling FRAUD, they gathered the requisite number of petition signatures (5%), and the commissioners (voting along party lines, see story here) decided to spend $55,000 of county money on a hand recount. If it follows the typical pattern of recounts, it’ll change the vote totals by single digits. (For update on results, see story here.)
Think a hand recount will satisfy the election deniers? Of course not; grounding in reality isn’t their strong suit.
This reminds me of a possibly apocryphal story I heard many years ago about a small New England town where 49 people voted Republican and 1 person voted Democrat in every presidential election. Naturally the whole town speculated about who the Democrat was, and popular opinion settled on the old hermit who lived in a cabin at the edge of the woods. Well, he died; and in the next election, there were 48 Republican votes and 1 Democratic vote.
I don’t know if this story is true; I suspect not. But like Aesop’s fables, it contains a moral: Your neighbors might not be what you think they are.