Recount Set For U.S. Senate Race, Ballot Petition Filed In Bucks County Court

Sen. Bob Casey and candidate David McCormick.

A recount is set for the U.S. Senate race between Democratic incumbent Sen. Bob Casey and Republican challenger Dave McCormick, according to Pennsylvania’s Department of State.

The contest’s slim margins fall within the state’s requirements for an automatic recount. Pennsylvania Department of State Secretary Al Schmidt’s office said that the unofficial vote tally shows the race within a 0.5 percent margin, triggering the recount.

Unofficial results from the state put McCormick ahead with 48.9 percent of the vote to Casey’s 48.5 percent as of Thursday morning.

The Associated Press declared McCormick the winner two days after the election, but Casey did not conceded in the days since and noted there were tens of thousands of ballots that still needed to be adjudicated.

In Bucks County, Casey led in the unofficial count by just over 1,000 votes as of Thursday morning.

Schmidt said Thursday afternoon that there will be 7 million ballots to recount.

Of a remaining roughly 80,000 uncounted ballots, the majority are provisional ballots and the rest are military and overseas ballots, which were not due back to election offices until this past Tuesday.

“Senator-Elect McCormick’s lead is insurmountable, which the AP made clear in calling the race. A recount will be a waste of time and taxpayer money, but it is Senator Casey’s prerogative. Senator-Elect McCormick knows what it’s like to lose an election and is sure Senator Casey will eventually reach the right conclusion,” McCormick spokeswoman Elizabeth Gregory said.

“Senator Casey wants all Pennsylvanians’ voices to be heard as local county election officials continue to count votes. This democratic process must be allowed to play out to determine the result of this election,” according to a statement from the Casey campaign.

The recount process will begin statewide by Nov. 20 and conclude by Nov. 26, with counties required to report results to the secretary of state by noon on Nov. 27. The final recount results will be made public on the same day, according to state officials.

McCormick, the Republican National Committee, and Republican Party of Pennsylvania filed a civil appeal in the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas late Wednesday seeking to stop the counting of incorrectly dated ballots by the Bucks County Board of Elections.

The Bucks County case deals with 405 mail-in ballots counted by the Board of Elections that have issues with the dates on them but otherwise follow the ballot rules. The Republicans wrote in their filing that counting those ballots violates state and federal law and decisions made by other counties.

The Bucks County Board of Elections, which is made up of the two Democratic and one Republican county commissioners, voted 2-1 Tuesday to count the ballots. The decision was split along party lines.

Board members Diane Ellis-Marseglia and Bob Harvie, both Democrats, said Tuesday that they supported counting the ballots, but noted they would be labeled in the case of legal challenges.

Gene DiGirolamo, a Republican, said he was concerned about counting the ballots in question in light of recent court rulings that said they shouldn’t be counted. He noted that he expected the county to be sued “no matter what.”

Ellis-Marseglia said at the meeting that she welcomed a court to review the decision and stated she knew her decision might violate a court precedent.

National Republicans on Thursday filed a lawsuit in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court over whether ballots with incorrect dates be counted in the state’s counties. The Republicans called them “illegal ballots.”

The statewide recount is Pennsylvania’s eighth since the enactment of the automatic recount law under Act 97 in 2004.

The last statewide election recount happened during the 2022 Republican U.S. Senate primary between McCormick and Dr. Mehmet Oz, who emerged victorious after the recount confirmed the initial results.

McCormick held a victory event in Pittsburgh late last week and attended freshman senator orientation in Washington D.C. on Tuesday after an invitation from Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office.

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