Despite court rulings stating ballots with incorrect dates or no dates at all cannot be counted, Democrat County Commissioners voted to include them.
In the Pennsylvania Senate race between incumbent Democrat Bob Casey and his challenger David McCormick, who has already been declared the winner by the Associated Press and multiple other outlets, McCormick’s lead is inside the margin that triggers an automatic recount.
Though already declared the winner, and McCormick in Washington, D.C. this week for freshman orientation, Casey has yet to concede to McCormick.
As the Keystone State’s 67 counties begin their recount process, multiple counties in Southeast Pennsylvania including Bucks County, have decided to accept and count ballots “lacking proper signatures”, despite a ruling from the state Supreme Court barring their inclusion.
Democrat Bucks County board members Diane Ellis-Marseglia and Bob Harvie overruled Republican Gene DiGirolamo to accept the undated or improperly dated ballots and to segregate them in anticipation of legal challenges. In a separate decision, the board rejected other ballots for a variety of reasons, including ballots with no signature or those missing secrecy envelopes.
While debating the inclusion of various ballots, Board Chair Ellis-Marseglia spoke on the matter saying she wanted to violate the law, arguing “people violate laws anytime they want.”
In neighboring Montgomery County, Democrat Commissioner Neil Makhija said they intend to count the same type of ballots, arguing that “we know when a ballot is sent and received through barcodes [on] our envelopes” which renders the dating requirement by the voter moot, calling it a technicality.
The chair of the Pennsylvania Republican Party called the actions of Bucks, Montgomery, Centre, and Philadelphia counties “lawlessness” and pledged to take the situation to the State Supreme Court, the same court that previously ruled the ballots could not be counted.
CNN’s investigative journalist Andy Kaczynski characterized the situation as “Democrats in PA” “openly defying court rulings.”
In response to the counting, the McCormick campaign filed a lawsuit in Bucks County Common Pleas Court on Thursday in an attempt to stop the inclusion of the undated ballots in question during the recount.
The recount must begin in each of the state’s 67 counties by November 20th and be completed by midday on November 26th.
