Bruce Springsteen to hold Philly concert with Barack Obama; Kamala Harris returning to the city Sunday; Trump campaigns in North Carolina

With two weeks to go until Election Day, nearly 1 million fewer voters have applied and been approved for mail ballots than at the same point in 2020, which will likely speed up the election results in the state.

So far this year, there have been nearly 1.9 million mail ballot applications approved in Pennsylvania as of Tuesday, with nearly 58% of mail ballots going to registered Democrats, 30% to Republicans, and 12% to other voters who aren’t registered with either of the major parties. While Democrats dominate mail voting, Republicans have increased their share from 2020.

More than half of the mail ballots across the state have been cast and returned. Voters can request ballots through Oct. 29 at 5 p.m. — one week before the election. Ballots can be returned to a local election office, sent back in the mail, or left in a drop box, but they must be received by 8 p.m. on Nov. 5.

Democratic candidates for the state House and their volunteers have knocked more than 1 million doors across Pennsylvania so far, surpassing the milestone earlier than they did in 2022 when Democrats successfully flipped control of the state House.

House Democrats hold a one-seat majority in the House, and hope to maintain and expand that majority this year. The state House maps were redrawn in 2022 as part of redistricting, making the chamber much more competitive. However, there are still fewer than a dozen races that are true toss-ups that will decide who controls the state House.

The House Democratic Campaign Committee announced the 1-million-door milestone Monday, and executive director Madeline Zann said they will continue knocking on voters’ doors “every day until polls close on November 5th.”

Former President Donald Trump will reportedly sit for an interview with the most popular podcast host in the country — comedian Joe Rogan. 

The interview will take place Friday at Rogan’s studio in Austin, Texas, Politico reported. It’s unclear when the podcast will air. 

Vice President Kamala Harris also reportedly met with Rogan’s podcast team, Reuters reported last week. A Harris campaign spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Three Pennsylvanians have been the first recipients of Elon Musk’s daily $1 million prize to swing state voters who signed a petition powered by his pro-Trump America PAC.

John Dreher, Kristine Fishell, and Shannon Tomei were each randomly selected to win the Musk lottery. This financial investment is indicative of the lengths that Musk is willing to go to help deliver Pennsylvania, and other battlegrounds, for former President Donald Trump in November.

But the sweepstakes raises some questions, both legally and about the effectiveness of Musk’s efforts. All three lottery winners are registered Republicans and had returned their mail ballots prior to receiving the $1 million, according to state records. Meanwhile, some legal experts have deemed the contest “clearly illegal,” and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro suggested authorities could investigate the situation.

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt sent a letter to the Lancaster Board of Elections claiming employees of the Republican-controlled board had broken state and federal law by denying voter registration requests and in-person mail ballot requests from college students.

According to the letter, county election officials had been improperly rejecting student voter registrations because they did not have a Pennsylvania drivers license or were already registered in another state, and in some cases were leaving applications in pending status for long periods of time.

Though it is illegal to vote in two states, it is not illegal to be registered in two states and state and county processes are set up to eventually remove voters from voter rolls when they move to another state or become inactive voters in their prior state. It is illegal in Pennsylvania to deny someone voter registration because they are registered elsewhere or because they do not have a Pennsylvania ID.

Bruce Springsteen will hold a concert and rally with former President Barack Obama in Philadelphia Monday as part of a series of get out the vote events featuring the singer in key battlegrounds.

The campaign did not say where the evening concert would take place.

A senior campaign official said the concert would follow a concert and rally in Atlanta on Thursday with Springsteen, Obama, and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Megan Rapinoe, the former professional American soccer player and Olympian, is stopping at two bars in Philadelphia Tuesday afternoon to campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris.

First, she will visit Saint Lazarus Bar in Fishtown with reproductive rights activist Kaitlyn Kash, who speaks about her experience struggling to get the reproductive health care she needed in her home state of Texas.

Then, Rapinoe will visit Cockatoo, a bar in the Gayborhood, with Philadelphia City Councilmember Rue Landau.

Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Philadelphia Sunday, her campaign confirmed Tuesday.

Few details were available about the stop. Campaign officials said the vice president will be in the city Sunday, but didn’t say when or where Harris will appear.

Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have collectively made nine visits to Philadelphia since the start of the campaign. This stop — less than two weeks before Election Day — will no doubt be to gin up turnout in the deeply blue city.

» READ MORE: Vice President Kamala Harris will campaign in Philadelphia this weekend

From Allentown to Erie, mailboxes are bursting with campaign literature like trash cans at the end of a music festival.

Television, TikTok, and sports talk radio broadcast a barrage of blunt ads and Pennsylvanians’ commutes are increasingly snarled by candidates headed to a McDonald’s or a historical site, or a podium in another swingy part of this internationally-known battleground state.

The 2024 presidential election moved into Pennsylvania and never left, an Inquirer analysis of the last year of campaigning shows.

Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t announced any campaign events Tuesday, but she will be recording two separate television interviews.

Harris will sit down for an interview with NBC News anchor Hallie Jackson in Washington, D.C., that will air on the NBC Nightly News at 6:30 p.m. Philly time. Jackson joined Harris Monday during campaign stops in Malvern, Michigan, and Wisconsin, where she made an appeal for support from Republican voters alongside former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney (R., Wyo.).

Harris is also recording an interview with Telemundo anchor Julio Vaqueiro. Highlights of that interview will air Tuesday during Noticias Telemundo’s newscast at 6:30 p.m. The full interview will air Wednesday at 7 p.m. as part of a half-hour primetime special.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will return to Philadelphia Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign said.

The campaign did not provide details but a Philadelphia source familiar with the event said Walz would be here for a political fundraiser.

Walz, who was last in Philadelphia when he was announced as Harris’ running mate, has spent much of his time on the trail in rural parts of Pennsylvania, where the campaign hopes he can siphon off support from former President Donald Trump.

With two weeks left until Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump’s campaigns are slated to continue their pushes in swing states Tuesday with stops in North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Arizona.

Harris will sit down for an interview with NBC News anchor Hallie Jackson in Washington, D.C. that will air on the NBC Nightly News at 6:30 p.m. Philly time.

Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is slated to appear alongside former President Barack Obama at an afternoon campaign rally in Madison, Wis., Tuesday. Additional details were not immediately available. Tuesday marks the first day of early voting in Wisconsin.

Most Americans cast their ballots in person at polling places, but voting by mail is a long-standing tradition in U.S. elections, dating back to the American Revolution.

While Pennsylvanians have used voting by mail for decades, the state saw a surge of mail ballots in 2020, according to MIT’s Election Lab. This followed a 2019 law making all registered voters eligible for mail-in voting, a change accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since then, Pew reports more than a third of U.S. voters cast their vote through the mail.

Vice President Kamala Harris reached her hand out to conservative and centrist Republican voters in Chester County during a moderated talk with former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney (R., Wyo.) on Monday, part of Harris’ renewed push for undecided voters in the Philadelphia collar counties in the final weeks before Election Day.

Flanked on stage by about two dozen voters and red backdrops reading “Country Over Party,” Harris and Cheney were moderated by Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark, a center-right, anti-Trump political news publication. Longwell, who grew up in Perry County, also helped found Republican Voters Against Trump.

During the 45-minute conversation at People’s Light in Malvern, Harris underscored the threat she believes former President Donald Trump poses to democracy and stood firm in her belief in restoring abortion access nationwide.