in voting with Elizabeth Warren visit

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Early voting has begun in parts of Pennsylvania, and Democrats aren't wasting any time starting their door-to-door canvassing to get voters out to the polls.

Montgomery County became one of the first counties in the closely watched swing state to begin accepting mail-in ballots. Residents can return ballots by mail or take them to election precincts or secure boxes across the county for in-person drop-off.

"Starting Friday, you're going to be able to walk in, register to vote, request your absentee, and vote on the spot." Montgomery County Commissioner Neil Makhija told the assembled crowd at the Narbeth Municipal Building.

The county has become a Democratic stronghold, since Joe Biden won by more than 319,000 votes in 2020 and took the county by more than 62%. Hillary Clinton also won the county by a significant margin, but with only 256,000 in 2016 . The difference between those two vote totals—63,000—well exceeds the 40,000 votes Clinton lost the state by in that low-turnout year.

Therefore, if history is any indicator, mobilizing the democratic base out in Montgomery County could be what makes or breaks the election for Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz.

With that in mind, they brought in a party leader, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren to talk to more than 200 party volunteers.

"It's good to be in the Keystone State because you are truly the keystone in this election," she said. "We're counting on you."

Warren, a progressive Democrat, has represented Massachusetts since 2013. Before that, she led the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and was selected to lead it by then-President Barak Obama, but a Republican-led effort stopped her appointment. She ran for president in 2020 and was an early frontrunner before dropping out of the Democratic primary.

"You'll remember she worked alongside President Obama to set up the new agency to hold Wall Street banks and financial institutions accountable to you and to me and to protect consumers from financial traps hidden in credit cards and mortgages," U.S. Representative Madeleine Dean told the crowd during the event.

In her speech, Warren mostly focused on healthcare, especially reproductive health rights.

"More than 30% of all women in this country now live in a place that effectively bans access to abortion and puts IVF at risk," she said, assing that she has talked to women in those states. "They talk about what it meant to walk into a hospital emergency room in the middle of a miscarriage and have a doctor examine them. The doctor knows what's going to have to happen but says, 'I'm sorry, I can't give you the medical care that you need because you are not close enough to death."

Although Donald Trump has taken credit for the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that constitutionally protected access to abortions for nearly 50 years, he has claimed that he would not pursue a national abortion ban.

But many Democrats, including Warren, are skeptical.

"Donald Trump and JD Vance have already worked out how they, by themselves, can ban access to abortion," Warren said. "And I'm not just talking in red states; I'm talking in purple states and blue states.

The supporters also heard from Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, representing 1.8 million teachers nationwide, including more than 36,000 in Pennsylvania.

Weingarten said that Trump and other Republicans "want to get rid of the Department of Education." Earlier this month, Trump told a rally in Wisconsin that he would "eliminate" the department and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos during his first term, calling the Department "irrelevant."

"Now, I don't like bureaucracy either, but what does that mean?" Weingarten rhetorically asked. "Get rid of all the money for kids with special needs? Get rid of all the money for Title I? Get rid of what Walz has done in Minnesota, which is feeding programs for all kids in all schools, breakfast and lunch all the time."

Weingarten's wife, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, also addressed the crowd of Harris supporters and argued that Trump "inflames antisemitism," while Harris, as a prosecutor in California, "fought hate crimes and against antisemitism."

"She has a long and profound history of caring about the state of Israel and caring about how the state of Israel goes about being protected," she said. Rabbi Kleinbaum also pointed to a statement that Harris issued on the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah that operated in Lebanon, in which Harris called Nasrallah a "terrorist with American blood on his hands."

"I will always support Israel's right to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis," the statement read.

Antisemitism has become a flashpoint in the race for president, particularly in Pennsylvania, where, just five years ago, a shooter committed the deadliest attack on the Jewish community after killing seven people and wounding several others, including Holocaust survivors at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Republicans have also used protests against the war in Gaza to accuse Democrats of antisemitism and " pandering to Hamas ."

However, Trump has been accused of fanning flames of antisemitism for years and has said that Jews who vote Democrat are "disloyal " and that they would be at least partly to blame if he loses in November.

WHYY News asked Warren if she saw any impact from Republican efforts to create a wedge between Democrats and Jewish voters. She did say whether the strategy is effective but that Trump "has made clear a big part of his campaign is based on hate."

"Donald Trump thinks that he gets more power if he can divide Americans, because if we're willing to come together and we're willing to treat each other with respect... then Donald Trump loses," she said.

In an effort to stop early and mail-in voting in Montco, Republicans — including the Republican National Committee and U.S. Senate candidate David McCormick — are suing the county saying that election officials have not completed sufficient "logic and accuracy testing."