Pennsylvania has been considered pivotal in determining who wins the Presidential Election. In 2016, the state voted for Donald Trump, despite polls favoring Hillary Clinton by significant margins. In 2020, Real Clear Politics gave Biden a 1.2% edge over Trump in its final average of polls. At the final Presidential debate, Biden said he would stop fracking and Trump leaned into that statement throughout the rest of the election season. However, there were some questionable changes made by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that potentially tilted the outcome for Biden.
In October 2019, the PA State Legislature enacted Act 77 that permitted, for the first time, no excuse mail-in voting for every registered PA voter. It included a provision to move the long-held deadline to receive absentee and mail-in ballots from 5PM on the Friday before Election Day to 8PM on Election Day. However, the PA Supreme Court, and not the legislature, rewrote the law, allowing for ballots received after the 8PM deadline to be counted for an additional three days. Not only was the deadline extension technically invalid, the late ballots were accepted even without a postmark. This has been basis for much of the litigation around vote totals in Pennsylvania.
With 99% of the vote in, Joe Biden’s lead over Donald Trump was 82,000 votes or 1.2 percentage points.