Philly commissioner pushes back after Trump tells supporters to ‘guard the vote’
Philadelphia City Commissioner Lisa Deeley on Sunday said former President Donald Trump was attempting to “sow doubt” about the 2024 elections when he told supporters to “guard the vote” in predominantly Democratic cities, including Philadelphia.
“This is nothing new, Trump says these things before every election,” Deeley said in a post to social media platform X, formerly Twitter, “and I expect we will hear more of this over the next year.”
On Saturday during a campaign stop in Ankeny, Iowa, Trump told supporters they should closely watch voting in three of the largest cities in battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia, after repeating his false claims of election fraud in 2020.
“The most important part of what’s coming up is to guard the vote,” Trump said. “And you should go into Detroit, and you should go into Philadelphia and you should go into some of these places, Atlanta, and you should go into some of these place and we have to watch those votes when they come in.”
Deeley, one of the commissioners who oversees voting in the city of Philadelphia, said in response to Trump’s remarks that “I can only assume it is to try and sow doubt about the validity of the election results.”
She added that in 2016 “he said that they had to watch and make sure people didn’t vote five times. In 2020, there was ‘Bad Things Happen in Philadelphia.’ Each of those elections, 2016 and 2020, were completely fair and accurate and that is what we will continue to deliver in 2024.”
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In 2020, the vote-counting process in Philadelphia took several days, ultimately going in favor of Joe Biden, but after protests in the city by both pro-Trump and anti-Trump factions. The Trump campaign challenged the results of the election in Pennsylvania and other states with dozens of fruitless lawsuits, and despite no evidence, the former president has continued to insist the election was “stolen” via fraudulent means.
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