Philly Vote Counting Office Getting Death Threats: Report

PHILADELPHIA — Joe Biden is the president elect in the United States, largely in part due to Democratic votes in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, which sent him over the 270 electoral vote count to defeat President Donald Trump.

The vote count at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia has been a topic of much discussion and the site for dueling protests since Election Day.

And while "Count Every Vote" protesters call for all votes to be tallied and Trump supporters say "stop the vote," the city's election office has been getting death threats.

Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt told 60 Minutes that the office he and his fellow commissioners Lisa Deeley and Omar Sabir oversee has been fielding threatening calls.

Schmidt, a Republican, said the office has gotten "calls to remind us that this is what the Second Amendment is for, people like us."

"That's a not-so-veiled death threat," 60 Minutes reporter Bill Whitaker said.

"Yes, for counting votes in a democracy," Schmidt said. "At the end of the day, we are counting eligible votes cast by voters. The controversy surrounding it is something I don't understand."

As of 1:50 p.m. Monday, nearly a week out from the election, Philadelphia has 11,380 outstanding mail-in ballots. Pennsylvania overall has 54,304 mail-in ballots left to count.

According to the state, Biden has 3,360,318 votes to Trump's 3,315,462 as of 1:50 p.m. Monday.

"The real damage is not who wins or who gets elected," Schmidt told 60 Minutes. "The real damage is how we all react to this process. So that at the end of the day we all have confidence that all the voices are heard and win or lose these are the people that we the people have elected to represent us."

Schmidt's 60 Minutes segment begins about two minutes into the video below: