Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Barack Obama attend an event to mark the 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act at the White House on April 5, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
When former President Barack Obama visits Pittsburgh on Thursday to campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris, it will be part of a larger get-out-the-vote effort, with a focus on early voting.
Pennsylvanians can vote early in most counties through Oct. 29. In Pittsburgh, voters can visit their local election office to cast a ballot, and beginning Oct. 15, will be able to vote at satellite locations across Allegheny County.
Obama, a longtime friend of Harris’, will be visiting battleground states in the final weeks of the campaign.
The deadline to register to vote in Pennsylvania in the November election is Oct. 21. To check if they are registered to vote in the commonwealth, Pennsylvanians can visit the Department of State website. Detailed information about how to register, where your polling place is and other information can be found at the state’s voting and elections website or at iwillvote.com/pa.
Voting in Pennsylvania is somewhat fraught this election cycle, as lawsuits over mail-in ballots and a 2019 law allowing no-excuse mail voting continued to move through the courts. One key issue has been the mail-in ballots’ envelopes, which must be dated correctly in order to be considered valid, even though the date has no bearing on the ballot itself or the voter’s intent.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Saturday declined to hear a case challenging the decision to enforce the date requirement on mail-in ballots, citing concern about the proximity of the election and creating more confusion for voters.
Earlier in the election cycle, former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee for president, railed against mail-in voting, claiming it allowed for cheating, and Republicans have continued to fight mail ballot cases in the courts. But information about mail-in voting has been prominently displayed at recent Trump rallies, and encouraged by other GOP candidates in Pennsylvania.
Trump will be in Pennsylvania a day before Obama, with campaign appearances scheduled in Scranton and Reading. He returned to Butler last weekend, to the site of a July assassination attempt against him.
The commonwealth’s 19 electoral votes make it a must-win for presidential candidates.