Josh Shapiro

By David Ian Klein November 2, 2020

On election day, Pennsylvania is shaping up to be a hotly-contested battleground, and a recent Supreme Court ruling has only made things more complicated in the swing state. However, Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s attorney general who keeps kosher and was educated in Jewish day schools, is mixing it up with President Trump on Twitter.

Last week, the Supreme Court voted to allow ballots received up to three days past the election to be counted, as long as they were mailed beforehand.

Nonetheless, President Trump, who has repeatedly voiced his distrust of mail-in ballots, declared that he is already planning a legal battle in Pennsylvania on election night.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

“As soon as that election’s over, we’re going in with our lawyers,” Trump told reporters in Charlotte, North Carolina on Monday.

Shapiro responded on Twitter.

“Our elections are over when all the votes are counted. But if your lawyers want to try us, we’d be happy to defeat you in court one more time,” said Shapiro who is working to make sure Pennsylvania’s election results, including the late ballots are unimpeachable.

FACT CHECK: Our elections are over when all the votes are counted.

But if your lawyers want to try us, we’d be happy to defeat you in court one more time. https://t.co/mj6d8WLwvK

— Josh Shapiro (@JoshShapiroPA) November 2, 2020

“A careful decision was made to try to stave off the anticipated legal challenges by Donald Trump and his enablers,” Shapiro told The Washington Post in an interview on Thursday.

To that end, the state of Pennsylvania, fearing that a challenge to the late ballots will be used to halt the counting of all mail in ballots in the state if they are mixed together, has publicly announced that the late ballots will be kept separate from all other mail-in ballots.

“We have a sitting president who’s actively trying to undermine this election,” Shapiro told the Post. “He’s doing that because he knows that if all legal eligible votes are counted, he’s more likely than not going to come out on the losing side here in Pennsylvania.”

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount