Democrats on the Bucks County Board of Commissioners voted to illegally count misdated and undated ballots in an attempt to swing Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate election in favor of ousted Democrat incumbent Sen. Bob Casey, D-Penn.
The vote comes after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court already ruled those ballots were not allowed to be counted, per state law.
Diane Ellis-Marseglia, one of the Democrats, admitted she knew it was against the law, but voted to count the ballots anyway.
“I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country. And people violate laws anytime they want,” she said. “For me if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention to it.”
Democrat Bob Harvie also voted in favor. Neither Marseglia nor Harvie responded to a request for comment from The Federalist. Republican Gene DiGirolamo voted against counting the ballots.
The Bucks County Republican Party said that its attorneys are working with attorneys from the state GOP and the Republican National Committee to “address this matter.” Senator-elect Dave McCormick has reportedly appealed the county’s unlawful ruling in the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas, challenging the “decision to count 405 undated or misdated mail-in ballots from the Nov. 5 General Election.”
The razor-thin margin of Casey’s loss triggered an automatic recount, but Casey has also refused to concede even as McCormick spends time in Washington, D.C., to participate in the Senate orientation process.
“Senator-Elect McCormick’s lead is insurmountable, which the AP made clear in calling the race,” McCormick spokeswoman Elizabeth Gregory said in a press release. “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.”
The Democrat commissioners in Bucks County appear to be doing the bidding of Casey, however, in trying to get as many ineligible ballots counted as possible, and the effort does not stop at improperly dated or undated ballots.
As The Federalist’s Beth Brelje reported, Casey is pushing to have ballots cast by unregistered voters counted as well. The Casey campaign has sent letters to counties to challenge the rejection of provisional ballots by unregistered voters. The McCormick campaign said that the Casey challenges are arguing that the Casey campaign, not county boards, should be the ones deciding who is registered to vote and who is not.
The Pennsylvania Department of State said that counties will be required to start their recount no later than Nov. 20 and complete it by noon on Nov. 26. They must then deliver their results to Secretary of State Al Schmidt by noon on Nov. 27.
That recount will not occur until all of the votes are finished being counted the first time. About 80,000 ballots still need to be counted, broken down into roughly 20,000 mail-in and absentee ballots and 60,000 provisional ballots, according to a video message from Schmidt.
Schmidt also said that the recount will employ “a different method or different equipment to tabulate votes than they used” to tabulate the initial results in order to identify issues that may have occurred during the initial count.
As of Wednesday, Casey’s share of the vote is 3,350,972 (48.50 percent) to McCormick’s 3,380,310 (48.93 percent).
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