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      Pennsylvania officials investigating 2,500 voter registrations for fraud

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      Officials in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, are investigating about 2,500 voter registrations after election workers discovered signs that they may be fraudulent.The registrations under investigation were dropped off in two batches just before Pennsylvania’s voter-registration deadline on Monday. Election workers contacted the district attorney’s office after they noticed several suspicious applications that contained the same handwriting, signatures for voters that didn’t match what was on file, and inaccurate personal identifier information, including names, addresses, social security and driver’s license numbers, said Heather Adams, the district attorney, during a press conference on Friday.Investigators also spoke with voters who said they had not requested or filled out the forms that were turned in, she said.The announcement comes as voting is already under way in Pennsylvania, a must-win battleground state for both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris this election. Lancaster county, known for its Amish population, voted for Trump by nearly 16 points in 2020.Adams did not say how many applications her office had reviewed so far, but said that 60% of them had been fraudulent. She acknowledged that there were some legitimate applications in the batch and said those registrations would be processed.The effort appears to be associated with a large-scale canvassing group – she did not identify which one – and said that two other counties in the state are investigating a similar issue. The canvassers were paid, a common practice. Officials did not say whether there was a partisan breakdown in the applications.“It really shouldn’t matter. If there’s voters on the books that shouldn’t be, it increases the chance that we’re gonna have voter fraud,” Williams said.The announcement comes days after the county was accused of wrongfully holding up voter-registration applications from students. More

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      This race could affect Pennsylvanians more than the presidential election. Can Democrats win?

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      In a Pennsylvania suburb whose voters are coveted by both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Nicole Ruscitto walked from house to house on a gloomy Tuesday afternoon, informing residents that there is another important race in November.“I’m Nicole, I’m running for state senate in your district,” she told voters on the doorsteps of their red brick houses in Bethel Park, a town about 30 minutes from downtown Pittsburgh, which, if yard signs and election results are any gauge, is about evenly divided between Trump and Harris supporters. “I want to go to Harrisburg to help our families.”In a swing state that’s considered by both Trump and Harris as perhaps the most important to deciding the presidential election, Ruscitto is running for an office that receives less attention than the occupant of White House or members of Congress, yet may have far more impact on the day-to-day life of Pennsylvanians.For three decades, Democrats have been locked out of power in the state’s general assembly. On 5 November, the party is hoping the elections of Ruscitto, a school teacher and former town councilmember, and three other candidates to the state senate will change that.Should they wind up with control of the senate and the house of representatives – the party’s majority in the latter is just one seat – Democrats will finally be able to send Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania governor, a host of legislation that Republicans are currently blocking, ranging from increasing the minimum wage to abortion rights.“If we could have that trifecta, Governor Shapiro would be able to do so many great things for the people here in Pennsylvania, and I plan on doing that 100%,” Ruscitto said in an interview at her campaign office.While many Americans are fixated on the presidential election, there are 5,808 legislative seats in 44 states up for grabs in November, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, and voters’ choices may be more impactful than ever before. State governments across the United States have in recent years picked up the policymaking slack from Washington DC, where partisan gridlock and uncooperative Congresses have meant successive presidents have failed to enact many of their campaign promises.The results can be seen in the stark differences between laws in red and blue states.Where Democrats rule, governors have enacted laws to protect abortion access, cut down on emissions tied to climate change, curb gun violence and streamline the process to cast ballots. Republican-led states, meanwhile, have banned abortion to varying degrees, targeted gender-affirming care for transgender youths, restricted cities from passing gun control measures and expanded the role of religion in public education.Many states have legislatures and governor’s mansions controlled by the same party. A smaller group of states, including Wisconsin, Kansas and North Carolina, have governors of one party and legislatures controlled by the other. Pennsylvania is the only state in the union where the two houses of the general assembly are held by different parties.Considered a part of Democrats’ “blue wall” along the Great Lakes, the Keystone state has supported the party’s presidential candidates in most recent elections, though this year’s polls show Trump and Harris essentially tied. Democrats have also seen victories at the state level with the election of Shapiro and the US senator John Fetterman in 2022.But control of the general assembly has eluded them since 1994. John J Kennedy, a political science professor at West Chester University and an expert on the state legislature, credited that to a push by Republicans to draw district maps in their favor, as well as Democratic voters’ tendency to be clustered in states’ urban areas.“Democrats are at a natural disadvantage when it comes to the geography of a state like Pennsylvania, because they waste more votes,” he said. “Democrats are so concentrated, they’re at a sort of a natural disadvantage when it comes to accumulating a majority of seats.”The tide began to turn two years ago, when Democrats barely took control of the house in midterm elections that saw the party perform far better than expected nationwide, fueled by voters’ outrage at the US supreme court for overturning Roe v Wade. But Republican control of the state senate has meant many of their legislative ambitions – including a bill intended to protect abortion seekers in the state, where the procedure is legal up until about 24 weeks of pregnancy – have gone nowhere.Vincent Hughes, a Democratic senator who is the campaign chair of the Pennsylvania senate Democratic campaign committee, said he believes more voters are aware of the importance of legislative races, citing Trump’s attempts to get Republicans in Pennsylvania and other swing states to go along with his plan to block Joe Biden from taking office in 2020.“What has happened is that the importance of state legislators nationally has become much clearer in the last four or five years, and I think that will lead to more folks getting more engaged in down-ballot races at the state legislative level,” he said in an interview.Democrats’ hopes for a majority hinge on winning purple districts around the city of Erie, the state capital Harrisburg, and two in Pittsburgh’s suburbs – including the one in its western outskirts where Ruscitto is running against incumbent Devlin Robinson. A Marine Corps veteran and businessman, Robinson unseated a Democratic officeholder four years ago and promptly signed a letter, along with many of his colleagues, encouraging the top Republicans in Congress to delay certifying Pennsylvania’s election results as part of Trump’s disproven campaign of election denialism.

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      Ruscitto hopes her emphasis on cost-of-living issues and personal experience as a teacher, as well as attacks on Robinson for voting for a state constitutional amendment that could be used to curb abortion access, will give her an edge.“We have the lowest minimum wage, and it sits in our state senate, and it’s not getting passed. And, to me, that’s absurd,” she said.Residents of the district say Robinson has been stepping up his outreach to constituents as election day approaches. Joyce Reinoso, a retired teacher and campaigner for candidates who backs organized labor and public education, said he also has the power of incumbency.“I don’t care what party, it’s always harder to beat the incumbent because the name recognition, if nothing else,” she said.The Ruscitto campaign’s internal polling has found her leading Robinson by a mere two percentage points, within their survey’s margin of error. This week, the University of Virginia’s center for politics rated Pennsylvania’s house as a toss-up, but said the GOP has the edge in keeping the senate.In Bethel Park, which was briefly thrust into the national spotlight in July when a man from the town tried to kill the former president, houses with Trump yards signs and flags sit across the street from those backing Harris, and the two candidates’ ads are ubiquitous online and on television. But signs for Ruscitto and Robinson are relatively scarce – as are strong opinions.As she sat down for an early dinner at Ma and Pop’s Country Kitchen, Sandy Messiner, a retired bookkeeper, expressed no doubts about voting for Trump again.“If Trump gets in, my investments will go up. We need a businessman to run this country,” the 70-year-old said. And though she knew less about them, she planned to vote for all the other Republicans on the ballot.“I don’t care who gets in as long as they’re Republican.”Sitting at the other end of the counter was Pam Cirucci, an 83-year-old retired nurse who was sure she would not be voting for Trump, because “he doesn’t respect females”.A former Republican, Cirucci was less concerned with who controlled the legislature – or what the lawmakers in Harrisburg were up to at all.“There are so many things that are more important,” she said. More

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      Pennsylvania Supreme Court Allows Provisional Votes After Mail Ballot Rejections

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      The decision is likely to affect thousands of mail-in ballots among the millions that will be cast in Pennsylvania, a pivotal 2024 swing state.The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that voters who submit mail-in ballots that are rejected for not following procedural directions can still cast provisional ballots.The decision is likely to affect thousands of mail-in ballots among the millions that will be cast in Pennsylvania, the swing state that holds the most electoral votes and is set to be the most consequential in the presidential election.The court ruled 4 to 3 that the Butler County board of elections must count provisional ballots cast by several voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected for lacking mandatory secrecy envelopes.Secrecy envelopes are commonly used to protect the privacy of a person’s vote. In Pennsylvania, voters must accurately sign and date this outer envelope before sending in their ballots.Under the new ruling, voters whose mail-in ballots are rejected for being “naked ballots,” lacking the secrecy envelope, or for bearing inaccurate or missing information on the envelope will be given the chance to cast a provisional vote at their polling place. The ruling makes the practice available statewide.Provisional ballots are counted only when the voter’s registration is confirmed after voting — and the rejected ballot will not count. Many counties in the state will notify voters if their mail-in ballots are rejected for not following technical procedures and will give them the opportunity for a provisional vote.The court’s majority argued that allowing people a provisional vote helps ensure voter access while preventing double voting.The Republican litigants argued that the Butler County elections board had initially correctly voided the provisional ballots cast by the voters whose mail-in ballots had been rejected on procedural grounds. The ruling is a blow to the Republican National Committee and the state G.O.P., which brought the appeal to the state’s highest court.A spokeswoman for the R.N.C. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The Pennsylvania Democratic Party, which had participated in appealing the case, considered the ruling a victory.“While Republicans try to block your vote, Democrats are protecting it and standing up for the principle that every eligible voter has a right to make their voice heard, no matter how they vote,” Charles Lutvak, a spokesman for Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, and Alex Floyd, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said in a joint statement. “This ruling reaffirms that principle.” More

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      Yelp Disables Comments for McDonald’s Where Trump Donned Apron

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      The consumer review site temporarily disabled comments on the franchise’s page after the former president’s appearance prompted a flurry of reviews.Yelp has temporarily disabled reviews for the McDonald’s in Pennsylvania where former President Donald J. Trump held a campaign photo op because of a flood of phony write-ups and ratings.On Sunday, Mr. Trump donned an apron and briefly worked the fryer at a McDonald’s in Bucks County, Pa., where he distributed orders to preselected customers in the drive-through and spoke with reporters.But his customer service led to a flurry of mocking reviews that were not based on customers’ firsthand experiences, as required. Instead, the reviews on the restaurant’s Yelp page criticized Mr. Trump and also took aim at the franchise, while some celebrated the former president.“Don’t let convicted felons who tried to overturn an election stage campaign stunts,” one reviewer wrote.“This was an awful thing that was done and McDonald’s is now the new chick filet , and will get ZERO of my money and my business , hope it was worth alienating EVERY Woman in the USA,” another reviewer wrote.“There was a giant orange rat in the kitchen. The operator let it in to roam around and even posted pictures of it. Pretty weird,” another wrote.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Passed Up for the Ticket, Josh Shapiro Tries to Deliver Pennsylvania for Harris

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      Pennsylvania’s governor may not be on the verge of the vice presidency, but he says he has everything — including his “heart and soul” — riding on a Kamala Harris victory.Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania bounded off a big blue bus on Saturday afternoon with the other two governors of the critical “blue wall” states — Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Tony Evers of Wisconsin — and headed down a steep hill to greet a gathering of Democratic canvassers in a park outside Pittsburgh.It was the third of four stops that unseasonably warm, clear day for their Blue Wall bus tour. Though all three governors lead political battlegrounds critical to Vice President Kamala Harris’s chance at winning the presidency, only Mr. Shapiro came within a whisper of being on the ticket that they are now trying to elect.But if there were any lingering resentments, or even disappointment, it was not obvious that day, nor is it evident in his punishing schedule of campaign appearances, interviews, advertising shoots, fund-raisers and behind-the-scenes outreach efforts for Ms. Harris and fellow Democrats.Mr. Shapiro, his voice straining for emphasis, stressed what he sees as at stake in the election, for the nation, for his state and for him personally.“I want to be really clear about something: This is not just about the politics of winning a race,” Mr. Shapiro said in an interview in Baldwin Township, a suburb nestled in the wooded hills just south of Pittsburgh.Speaking of his own experience repeatedly suing the Trump administration as the commonwealth’s attorney general and then battling the Trump campaign as it tried to overturn the 2020 election, Mr. Shapiro called former President Donald J. Trump “a dangerous guy.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Liz Cheney urges conservatives to back Kamala Harris over abortion

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      Liz Cheney, a former Republican congresswoman and longtime opponent of abortion rights, condemned Republican-imposed bans on the procedure and urged conservatives on Monday to support Kamala Harris for president.Cheney was speaking at the first of three joint events with Harris in the suburbs of three swing states aimed at prising moderate Republican voters away from party nominee Donald Trump. She has become the Democrat’s most prominent conservative surrogate and is rumoured to be under consideration for a seat in a potential Harris cabinet.At the first event in Malvern, a Philadelphia suburb, against a blue backdrop that said “a new way forward” and red one that said “country over party”, Cheney suggested that Republican-led states have overreached in restricting abortion since the supreme court’s 2022 Dobbs decision ended it as a constitutional right.“I think there are many of us around the country who have been pro-life, but who have watched what’s going on in our states since the Dobbs decision and have watched state legislatures put in place laws that are resulting in women not getting the care they need,” said Cheney, a former Wyoming congresswoman and daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney.“I think this is not an issue that we’re seeing break down across party lines, but I think we’re seeing people come together to say: what has happened to women, when women are facing situations where they can’t get the care they need, where in places like Texas, for example, the attorney general is talking about suing, is suing, to get access to women’s medical records … that’s not sustainable for us as a country and it has to change.”Harris nodded repeatedly and applauded in response. The audience also clapped warmly.It was a striking attempt to build a permission structure for conservatives to back Harris, who has made reproductive freedom a centrepiece of her campaign and vowed to restore the protections of Roe v Wade if authorised by Congress. Cheney, by contrast, has an A rating from Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, a group that grades members of Congress based on their anti-abortion credentials.Monday’s three events in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin were being held in counties won by Nikki Haley in the Republican presidential primary. Haley, a former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the United Nations, had sought to neutralise abortion as an election issue by supporting states’ autonomy and rejecting calls for a national ban.Cheney has vocally opposed Trump since the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, and was vice-chair of a congressional committee investigating the attack. Her recent endorsement of Harris fuelled speculation that she could play a part in a future Harris administration.

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      Earlier this month, appearing on the popular daytime talkshow The View, Harris said she would differ from Joe Biden by including a Republican in her cabinet. She was asked by radio host Howard Stern if that might be Cheney but avoided a direct answer. Appointing Cheney would carry considerable political risks given her hawkish foreign policy and her father’s role in instigating the Iraq war.Trump has frequently tried to paint Harris, who is from deep blue California, as a radical liberal but she struck a moderate tone during her appearance with Cheney, who lost her House seat after she co-chaired a congressional committee that investigated the January 6 attack.She promised to “invite good ideas from wherever they come” and “cut red tape,” and she said “there should be a healthy two party system” in the country. “We need to be able to have these good intense debates about issues that are grounded in fact,” she said.“Imagine!” Cheney responded.“Let’s start there!” Harris said as the audience clapped. “Can you believe that’s an applause line?”View image in fullscreenVoters in Chester county, which includes Malvern, narrowly voted for Republican Mitt Romney in 2012 but the county was won by Hillary Clinton by nine percentage points in 2016 and Biden by 17 points in 2020.The discussion was chaired by Sarah Longwell, who runs the group Republican Voters Against Trump, and lasted 40 minutes including two questions from the audience.Harris said Trump “has been using the power of the presidency to demean and to divide us” and “people are exhausted with that”. The vice-president added: “People around the world are watching. And sometimes I do fret a bit about whether we as Americans truly understand how important we are to the world.”Cheney praised Harris, saying: “I’m a conservative. I know that the most conservative of all conservative principles is being faithful to the constitution. You have to choose in this race between someone who has been faithful to the constitution, who will be faithful, and Donald Trump.”Cheney said she was concerned about allowing a “totally erratic, completely unstable” Trump to run foreign policy. “Our adversaries know that they can play Donald Trump,” she said. “And we cannot afford to take that risk.”But some observers questioned the wisdom of campaigning with Cheney in Michigan, which has the highest concentration of Arab Americans in the country, given her hawkish foreign policy and her father’s role in instigating the Iraq war. Many such voters are now wavering or abstaining because of the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the crisis in Gaza.Trump weighed in on Monday, writing on his Truth Social platform: “Arab Voters are very upset that Comrade Kamala Harris, the Worst Vice President in the History of the United States and a Low IQ individual, is campaigning with ‘dumb as a rock’ War Hawk, Liz Cheney, who, like her father, the man that pushed Bush to ridiculously go to War in the Middle East, also wants to go to War with every Muslim Country known to mankind.”More than a hundred former Republican officeholders and officials joined Harris last week in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania, not far from where general George Washington led hundreds of troops across the Delaware River to a major victory in the revolutionary war. At a rally there, Cheney told Republican voters that the patriotic choice was to vote for Democrats. More

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      Conspiracy theories and a $1m check: a night at Elon Musk’s surreal election giveaway

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      Standing before a large US flag, which spanned the breadth of a vast stage, the world’s richest man told an assembled audience that he loved them.“This kind of energy lights a fire in my soul,” he said, having just made one of the crowd a millionaire after everyone chanted his name.His love – and that $1m – of course, was contingent on them all doing exactly as Elon Musk wanted: signing a petition tied to his political action committee (Pac) , which is dedicated to sending Donald Trump back to the White House.The spectacle was both surreal and potentially illegal. But no one here, not least Musk himself, seemed to care in the slightest.The billionaire was in Pittsburgh on his final stop across the vital swing state of Pennsylvania, having donated $75m to help get Trump re-elected, and seemingly willing to accept a job offer in Trump’s government should he win.Musk’s latest ploy to assist Trump to attain more political power, has been to give away $1m every day to a member of the public, provided they also live in a swing state and are registered to vote.The stunt is prohibited and akin to buying votes, in the view of some experts, as it violates federal election law preventing payments for registering to vote. The state’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, on Sunday described it as “deeply concerning” and encouraged law enforcement to “take a look at”. Musk’s America Pac did not respond to a list of questions from the Guardian after the Pittsburgh town hall.Sunday’s winner was a woman named Kristine Fishell, who walked down from the theater’s balcony wearing a red Trump T-shirt as Musk waited awkwardly on stage. She thanked him, not only for the money, but also for the “wealth and responsibility, you are using to save [free] speech”. She did not return to her seat after accepting the giant check, and organizers did not make her available for an interview. Hours later a video of Fishell was posted on Musk’s X platform, where she espoused the virtues of signing his petition to an overlay of soft piano music.Many of the attendees at the Roxian theatre said they had signed up to attend the event before he announced the $1m giveaway.Most said they were not concerned by the idea of the world’s richest man taking on a job in Trump’s administration, despite the myriad conflicts of interest that would pose. (Musk’s businesses hold several multi-billion dollar contracts with the US government and Trump has suggested making him a “secretary of cost-cutting” a murky new position within the executive branch.)

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      “I don’t think it’s a conflict of interest,” said one woman who did not give her name. “I think he is fighting for many Americans who feel their rights are being taken away, especially free speech.”Evan Huber was unfazed by the argument that Musk’s entry into government would mark the establishment of a new era of American oligarchy.“At that point all you can get is power,” he said, shrugging. “You already have all the money.”Lauren Stephenson, 40, who described herself as a political independent, arrived at the venue at 8.30am, so set was she to secure a seat.“We need more entrepreneurs,” she said when asked what Elon Musk had ever done for her personally. “I don’t understand why we condemn success. We used to celebrate success.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionStephenson, who was sad not to have won the $1m but said she was planning to buy her first Tesla nonetheless, was frustrated she had been unable to ask a question during the rest of the town hall, which lasted around two hours.Throughout the event, Musk reiterated a litany of falsehoods tied to Trump’s campaign. He argued that the “constitution is literally under attack”, spread false claims about voting machines and said that a Trump loss in November could ultimately end American democracy. “I fear if Trump does not win, we are going to have a single-party state that is going to be like California, but actually worse,” he said.Many in the audience asked questions about Musk’s businesses; his views on the future of AI; even if they should be starting their own families. One asked if he would consider running for president himself in 2028. He could not, he explained, due to the natural born citizen clause of the US constitution, and he did not want the job either.“I hate politics,” he said. “I just like building stuff. And making products that people love.”At one point, when he was asked a question about the future of nuclear power and began extolling the virtues of the sun, an attendee shouted: “Yes! Go the sun!” Later on a man began attempting to get the crowd to spontaneously sing the national anthem but no one joined in. Another attendee was removed by security after trying to shout a question out of line.But others asked more conspiracy themed questions, including whether Musk would consider financing the viewing of documentaries about child sex trafficking at the US border, or if he would consider creating a Hollywood studio to finance conservative film projects. He offered no firm commitments for any investment opportunities.Some began to trickle out before the event had finished, and Musk wrapped up with empty seats visible throughout the auditorium. He exited the venue behind a privacy curtain, in a blacked out SUV as the sun began to set over the Ohio river.The motorcade did not stop as the Guardian asked from the roadside: “Why will you not take questions from journalists, too?” More

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      ‘I’m not voting for either’: fracking’s return stirs fury in Pennsylvania town whose water turned toxic

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      Fracking has burst back on to the national stage in the US presidential election contest for the must-win swing state of Pennsylvania. But for one town in this state that saw its water become mud-brown, undrinkable and even flammable 15 years ago, the specter of fracking never went away.Residents in Dimock, a rural town of around 1,200 people in north-east Pennsylvania, have been locked in a lengthy battle to remediate their water supply that was ruined in 2009 after the drilling of dozens of wells to access a hotspot called the “Saudi Arabia of gas” found deep underneath their homes.The company behind the drilling, Texas-based Coterra, was barred from the area for years for its role in poisoning the private water wells Dimock relies upon and, in a landmark later move in 2020, was charged with multiple crimes. But it has now been ushered back into the area following a deal struck by the state’s Democratic leadership.The re-starting of drilling around Dimock late last year comes as Donald Trump and Kamala Harris clamor to cast themselves to Pennsylvania voters as supporters of fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, whereby water, sand and chemicals are injected deep underground to extract embedded oil and gas.“If she won the election, fracking in Pennsylvania will end on day one,” Trump said of Harris, who previously supported a ban, during the duo’s televised debate last month. The former US president has run a barrage of ads in the state accusing Harris of wanting to shut down the fracking industry. But during the same debate, Harris insisted “I will not ban fracking”, with the vice-president boasting of new fracking leases granted during Joe Biden’s administration.This bipartisan embrace of fracking has stirred fury among residents of Dimock whose well water is still riddled by toxins linked to an array of health problems and, most spectacularly, contains so much flammable methane that people have passed out in the shower, wells exploded, and water running from the tap could be set on fire by match, according to official reports and accounts from locals.View image in fullscreen“Sure as hell, I’m not voting for either of those two assholes,” said Ray Kemble, a bearded military veteran and former trucker, as he puffed on a cigar in his home. Reams of documents and photos chronicling the long fight against fracking lay on the table next to Kemble, along with a bottle of his murky tap water, three Sherlock Holmes-style smoking pipes and a briefcase filled with handguns.Shortly after a gas well was drilled a few hundred feet from Kemble’s home, he said his drinking water turned from dark brown to green and finally jet back, with the liquid smelling like he had taken “every household chemical you can think of, dump it into a blender, take two asses of a skunk and put that in there, put it on puree, dump it out, and take a whiff”.“The water is still not fixed,” said Kemble, who blames the loss of most of his teeth to the presence of uranium, along with other contaminants such as copper and arsenic, in his water.“When a politicians’ lips are moving they are lying,” he said. “It’s a fricking nightmare. We are back to square one from before the moratorium came into effect – there’s massive drilling like crazy. I don’t care who you are, rich, poor, or whatever, without water and clean air and clean soil, we’re all freaking dead.”Kemble, a Republican who has printed cards featuring the Gadsen flag snake coiled around a gas well, has found unlikely allies in this saga, with figures such as Yoko Ono and Mark Ruffalo voicing concern for Dimock’s plight. His neighbor Victoria Switzer, a former school teacher turned artist whose paintings adorn a soaring timber-framed home beside a bucolic creek, is a rare liberal in this staunchly conservative county but also shares Kemble’s frustration.View image in fullscreen“I like Kamala, but I was unhappy when she said she wouldn’t ban fracking,” said Switzer, who said her water bubbled “like Alka-Seltzer” after the drilling started. Like Kemble, she now gets bottled water deliveries each week from Coterra.“But then the other guy [Trump] just says, ‘We’ll drill more, we’ll get rid of the regulations’ – so that should scare us. People are held hostage by the fossil-fuel industry here.”Although 1.5 million people across Pennsylvania live within half a mile of oil and gas wells, compressors and processors, not all feel as sharply affected by fracking and to win the state’s crucial 19 electoral votes, according to prevailing political thinking, means not threatening an industry that directly employs around 16,000 people, around 0.5% of all jobs in the state.“Fracking has become a big part of the election but there really isn’t much opposition to it now, it’s become part of life in Pennsylvania,” said Jeff Brauer, a political scientist at Pennsylvania’s Keystone College. “A fracking ban would be very unpopular and Kamala Harris knows she can’t be against fracking if she’s going to win here. She had to clean that up.”View image in fullscreenBut how popular is fracking? Polling shows a complicated picture rather than overwhelming support, with two 2020 surveys showing slightly more Pennsylvania voters want to ban fracking than keep it, while a separate 2022 poll found the reverse. Unusually, Pennsylvania’s constitution enshrines the right to “clean air, pure water and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment”, unlike neighboring New York, which is among a handful of states to ban fracking.“The idea you have to court some fictional rural fracking supporter with Trump signs in their yard is ludicrous,” said Josh Fox, a film-maker and activist whose 2010 documentary Gasland showed people in Dimock and elsewhere holding up jars of muddy brown drinking water and turning their tap water into a roaring flame by lighting it.“Democrats have been foolish to give up the votes of people fighting for their lives. It’s clear they are afraid of the oil and gas industry,” he said. Fox added he will still vote for Harris but that “Democrats have thrown away a chance to tell people in rural Pennsylvania they will fight to protect their children from toxins. It’s a legacy of moral failure going back to Obama.”In Dimock, particular ire is reserved for Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, who in his previous role as state attorney general in 2020 convened a grand jury and charged Coterra, then known as Cabot, prior to a merger, with eight felonies for endangering the town’s drinking water. “There were failures at every level,” Shapiro claimed, pointing to testimony of children in Dimock waking up with severe nosebleeds because of the pollution exposure.View image in fullscreenYet, the denouement of the case in a local courtroom in 2022 unveiled a deal in which all the felony charges were dropped, with Coterra pleading no contest to a single misdemeanor in return for the company agreeing to build a new $16m water pipe for residents. Crucially, on the same day, the state department of environmental protection – which had found Coterra tainted 19 private wells and barred drilling in the Dimock area for more than a decade – allowed the company back into the region.“I was shocked. I was a fan of Shapiro but he betrayed us. He betrayed me,” said Switzer, who took part in a press conference with Shapiro, prior to knowing details of the deal, where she praised the then attorney general.“I wish I could retract that. I would’ve called out that traitor Shapiro if I’d known,” she said. “We walked into a trap that allowed the drilling to restart. I mean, when I heard he was in the mix to be vice-president I almost threw up.”View image in fullscreenA spokesman for Shapiro said he is an “an all-of-the-above energy governor, and he is taking action to invest in affordable and reliable renewable energy while continuing to support the key energy resources that have helped Pennsylvania become the leader it is today”. The settlement with Coterra is “historic”, the spokesman said, and that the governor “will never forget the people of Dimock”. Coterra did not respond to a request for comment.The water line should emerge by the end of 2026, although construction of it, unlike the new drilling, has yet to start. Coterra is not allowed to drill directly in the heart of Dimock but can do so at its edges, and already has three towering well complexes boring 7,000ft down into a section of the Marcellus shale, a thick formation of layered, radioactive rock, which contains about 1.3tn cubic feet of gas worth an estimated $3.9bn.From these wellheads sprout 11 drilling lines, known as laterals, that bend underground horizontally and snake for several miles underneath about 80 Dimock properties, with one running directly under Switzer’s house. “They are cutting up the valley like Swiss cheese,” she said.The rumbling from a new oil pad two miles away keeps Switzer awake at night, as does the hundreds of trucks shuttling the vast cocktail of water, sand and chemicals used in fracking. “I can’t sleep now, so I find it harder to take than I once did,” she said. “We came here to enjoy nature, and this has just torn our lives apart.”View image in fullscreenThis new drilling requires Coterra to monitor local water supplies, plug the older gas wells that dot this rolling landscape and provide water to residents. Still, avoiding further contamination as the drills pierce the water table, via failures in the drill casings or leaks of the substances used to pry open the shale for its gas, cannot be fully assured.“The operations are on a much larger scale now, using millions of gallons more water, so no company can guarantee there will be no further leaks. Once wells are drilled they will leak,” said Anthony Ingraffea, an environmental engineer at Cornell University who has advised affected residents.“The nine square miles of Dimock is a goldmine of natural gas. It’s the most productive in the world,” Ingraffea said. “Coterra will be happy getting hold of that in return for a water pipeline that I don’t think will ever be built. It’s teasingly cruel to do this to people. When you look at people in Dimock, you see pain and uncertainty in their eyes.”View image in fullscreenMuch of the newly drilled gas will be shipped overseas and marketed as a “clean” fuel in a process that, in fact, emits more planet-heating pollution than coal. The fracking itself, which is exempt from certain clean water regulations, will also pose fresh health risks, with studies showing that Pennsylvanians who live near fracking are at heightened risk of childhood lymphoma, asthma, pre-term births and low birth weights.The Environmental Protection Agency, however, only regulates 29 out of more than 1,100 shale gas contaminants potentially found in drinking water, with a 2016 federal report acknowledging that wells in 27 Dimock homes contain unhealthy levels of lead, cadmium, arsenic and copper, with 17 of these homes at risk of exploding because of the build-up of flammable gas.For Kemble, the resumption of drilling is the final straw after years of him and his neighbors suffering cancers he believes is a result of the air and water pollution. Kemble said he has rigged up cameras at his home and fears he could be targeted for his activism.Despite the pressure around being outspoken, Kemble said: “I’m still here … but one of these wells will blow up like Old Faithful in Yellowstone one day. There’s already the constant smell, nosebleeds, headaches. I eat Tylenol like they are candy.”View image in fullscreenKemble, who hauls water from a hydrant to a huge water tank that he then has to filter into his house, recently donated his home to a new research non-profit that will test the property’s water, soil and plants for contamination, to help inform potential new laws. He will soon leave Dimock, his home of 30 years, like others have done before him, because of the water.“This is my final fuck you to everybody, there’s going to be a scientist behind every tree here,” he said. “I’m tired of all the bullshit, all the stories and all the fucking crap. I want the hell out of here.”

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