Pennsylvania Democrats openly admit they counted illegal votes in the McCormick-Casey race

As Pennsylvania's competitive Senate race reaches a $1 million recount, Democratic officials in several green counties are publicly admitting to counting invalid votes in violation of state law and court orders.

The Associated Press called the race for the nomination of Sen. Republican candidate Dave McCormick, who currently holds 26,000 votes for Sen. Bob Casey. But Casey refused to concede and insisted that every vote be counted. A close margin — within one percent — triggered an automatic recount under Pennsylvania law.

However, the important question is which votes should be counted? The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled before the election that ballots without the required signatures or dates should not be included in the official results. However, Democratic officials in Philadelphia and the surrounding counties of Bucks, Center and Montgomery are ignoring the court order.

“I think we all know that precedent doesn't matter in this country anymore,” Bucks County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia, a Democrat, said Thursday as she and other Democrats voted to reject a GOP-led challenge to the ballot. should be removed.

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“People break the law whenever they want. So, for me, if I go against this law, it's because I want the court to pay attention. There is nothing more important than counting votes.”

Officials estimate there are less than 80,000 provisional ballots left to be counted across the Keystone State, less than 2 percent of the vote, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Although the chances of Casey being unable to pay his bills are slim, his attorneys and the McCormicks have clashed repeatedly at county commissioner meetings this week as local officials argue over whether to count minority votes.

Democrats insist they are right in believing that denying someone a vote because of a clerical error violates their constitutional rights.

In Montgomery County, for example, officials debated for 30 minutes about whether about 180 provisional ballots without secret envelopes should be counted. The Inquirer reported that several of these votes came from the same place, suggesting a mistake made by poll workers.

Democratic board chairman Neil Makhija voted to accept the ballots so that voters would not be deprived of their votes. But other board members, including one Democrat and one Republican, voted to reject the votes on the advice of district attorneys who ruled the law clearly said they shouldn't be counted.

“We're talking about constitutional rights and I can't take a step to discard a person's legitimate vote, otherwise, on an issue that we know is … irrelevant,” Makhija said at Thursday's meeting. The board finally voted to count 501 votes.

Similar disputes over hundreds of votes have been played out in Bucks, Chester and Delaware Counties.

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Trump (L) listens as David McCormick, a candidate for the United States Senate, speaks during a campaign rally in Reading, Pennsylvania, November 4, 2024. (ED JONES/AFP via Getty Images)

Separately, there is ongoing litigation regarding untimed mail ballots or those submitted with the wrong date in the outer envelope. Many local Democratic officials said the wrong date should not be a reason to revoke a person's vote. Lower courts agreed, but Pennsylvania's highest court ruled that the law required proper dates for vote counts.

McCormick's campaign and the Republican National Committee asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to reaffirm its Nov. 1 to stop Democrats from including untimed mail-in ballots in their final tallies. The Casey campaign and the Pennsylvania Department of State opposed the legal action, saying counties should be left alone and the high court should not intervene as challenges work their way through the appeals process.

The apparent defiance of court precedent has Republicans crying foul.

“Let's be clear about what's going on here: Pennsylvania Democrats are defiantly trying to break the law by trying to count illegal votes. They're doing it because they want to steal a senate seat,” Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley wrote in X.

He said the RNC had filed four lawsuits challenging the district's decisions on unwritten ballots and vowed to “fight as long as possible” to ensure McCormick's victory is recognized.

“This is the real kind of left-wing election meddling that undermines voter confidence,” Whatley said.

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Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey speaks to supporters before former President Barack Obama speaks during the 2018 Democratic presidential campaign in Philadelphia. (Mark Makela/Getty Images)

Democrats have defended their actions and pointed out that McCormick himself objected to counting the votes of his opponents when he followed the famous heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz in the Republican primary 2022 US Senate.

In that case, McCormick's attorney told a federal judge that the purpose of Pennsylvania's election law is to allow people to vote, “not to play 'gotcha' games with them.”

There are nearly thousands of mail-in ballots with incorrect dates or missing return envelopes across the state, although many counties have yet to be counted.

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The state-mandated recount must be completed by noon on Nov. 26. Officials said they do not expect the process to change the outcome of the race by more than a few hundred votes.

Both McCormick and Casey were in Washington, DC, this week. Casey participated in official Senate business and cast votes on the floor while McCormick attended the orientation of new members and met with other members of the new Republican majority to vote for the leadership of the convention.

Charles Creitz of Fox News Digital and The Associated Press contributed to this report.