TV station accidentally declares Kamala Harris has won election in Pennsylvania

‘Result’ that appeared on screen during grand prix was test gone wrong, says station

An ABC News station mistakenly declared that Kamala Harris had won the battleground state of Pennsylvania days before election day.
WNEP-TV, an ABC affiliate in Scranton, Pennsylvania, broadcast that Ms Harris had won 52 per cent of the votes to Donald Trump’s 47 per cent on Sunday during a Formula One race.
The station explained that the message had been mistakenly aired while testing its equipment ahead of polling day, but the blunder has fuelled conspiracy theories that the election is being rigged.
The “result” flashed up on TV screens on Sunday during the Mexico City Grand Prix, showing that Ms Harris had taken 3,293,712 votes to Trump’s 2,997,793 with 100 per cent of precincts reporting.
If that were repeated on Nov 5, it could seal the election for the vice-president. Pennsylvania has the largest number of electoral college votes of any swing state, and has been won by every victorious presidential candidate since 2008.
WNEP-TV said the results had been “randomly generated” during a test ahead of election day and came up on the screen in “error”.
“Those numbers should not have appeared on the screen, and it was an error by WNEP that they did,” it said in a statement to the Daily Mail.
“The numbers seen on the screen were randomly generated test results sent out to help news organisations make sure their equipment is working properly in advance of election night.”
The broadcaster continued: “The numbers were not reflective of any actual vote count. Pennsylvania law does not allow mail-in ballots to be taken out of their envelopes until 7am on election day, and no votes of any kind will be counted in Pennsylvania until after the polls close at 8pm.
“WNEP regrets the error and apologises for any confusion. We have taken steps to ensure that it does not happen again.”
Pennsylvania has already become a focus for unproven claims of vote-rigging ahead of election day.
Trump claimed this week that officials in Lancaster County in Pennsylvania had located thousands of ballots “all written by the same person”.
In fact, authorities said they were reviewing two batches of voter registration documents because some applications had shown possible signs of fraud, but did not say how many were thought to be fraudulent.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that the 2020 election, won by Joe Biden, was “rigged” against him. Dozens of lawsuits brought by the Trump campaign and other groups failed to prove the case after polling day.
Polling has consistently given Trump a thin lead in Pennsylvania since 2008, with a RealClearPolitics average putting the Republican ahead by 0.8 per cent.
In the 2020 election, Joe Biden won Pennsylvania by just 80,555 votes, or 1.17 per cent, in a result so close it was not declared until four days after the election.