Small crowds gathered in Philadelphia early Thursday morning outside the Pennsylvania Convention Centre where election workers began their third day of scanning ballots.
A DJ played for one group of protesters, who danced while asking for every vote to be counted, while across the street a smaller group were calling on officials to stop counting votes received after Election Day, echoing a Trump campaign request to the US Supreme Court. The demonstrations followed a peaceful march in favour of counting every vote on Wednesday evening, organised by unions and Black Voters Matter.
On Thursday morning Trump was ahead in Pennsylvania by about 176,000 votes, but the race has narrowed considerably from his lead of about 675,000 early Wednesday morning. The reason is mail ballots, which skew Democrat. By law, Pennsylvania officials could not start counting mail ballots until Election Day. There are still hundreds of thousands of mail ballots uncounted.
As protests continued, the Trump campaign legal team held a press conference in front of the convention centre to display a court ruling allowing them to observe the ballot counting process. “We are planning to enter that building right now,” campaign lawyer Pam Bondi told reporters before she and the Trump team walked into the building.
