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PITTSBURGH and BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Democratic county officials admit they are breaking the law to overturn Pennsylvania’s Senate election for losing Sen. Bob Casey.
“I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country,” said Bucks County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia, who voted Thursday to count deficient provisional ballots a Pennsylvania Supreme Court order barred, in which voters did not sign in one of two necessary boxes.
“People violate laws any time they want,” Ellis-Marseglia said. “So for me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention. There’s nothing more important than counting votes.”
As Democrat Casey refuses to concede and hopes a recount will overturn the race called more than a week ago for Sen.-elect Dave McCormick, Republicans allege Dems are also violating the Pennsylvania Supreme Court order not to count undated ballots and those from voters unregistered on Election Day — though they remain confident the businessman and combat vet will keep his victory after the legal shenanigans.
“When counting is done, Dave will be winning by tens of thousands of votes,” Mark Davin Harris, the McCormick campaign’s lead strategist, said about the ongoing count, which has narrowed to a 22,000-vote GOP lead.
“There is no path for Bob Casey to be leading heading into the recount,” Harris added. He said the burden of proof is on the Casey campaign to “show the actual math” of how it can close the gap enough to justify Pennsylvania taxpayers coughing up at least $1 million for a recount that’s required as McCormick’s lead is under 0.5 points — because the incumbent senator could call it off by admitting he lost.
McCormick and his GOP allies have charged Democrats with illegally trying to count “unregistered voters’ votes.”
“I am deeply disturbed by the efforts,” Harris said, noting Casey’s lawyers are appealing to county election boards to count potentially thousands of votes cast as provisional ballots after their registration could not be verified on Election Day.
“No one is trying to count votes from individuals who were not registered. This is categorically false,” Casey campaign attorney Adam Bonin told The Post.
“This is a blatant attempt by the GOP to lie and distract from their efforts to disenfranchise Pennsylvanians by throwing out votes from registered voters.”
The Post obtained documents showing an appeal by the Casey team to challenge the rejection of 595, 310 and 591 unregistered voters’ ballots in Lancaster, Lackawanna and Montgomery counties, respectively.
The Casey campaign “challenges the rejection of provisional ballots based solely on the Board’s staff’s failure to find voters’ names on registered-voter lists,” the Lackawanna appeal reads, arguing the election board may have failed to recognize eligible voters in the state’s database, the voters may have moved or their registration is pending and potentially canceled.
McCormick campaign attorney James Fitzpatrick clapped back: “There is zero legal or historical precedent to count the votes of unregistered voters in Pennsylvania,” promising to open litigation against election boards that “legitimize this frivolous argument.”
“I don’t recall past challenges trying to get the Board of Elections to count provisional ballots for voters who are not registered,” Seth Bluestein, Philadelphia County’s Republican commissioner, told The Post, after 13 years of working with the board.
Democratic lawyers withdrew challenges Friday in Philadelphia after they failed to provide a single voter who should have been registered.
McCormick’s team is also trying to overturn the Bucks County Board of Elections’ “baffling decision” to count 405 undated or misdated ballots.
The joint suit — which McCormick filed with the Pennsylvania GOP and Republican National Committee — alleges Tuesday’s board decision is “legally erroneous” and contradicts a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that stopped Philadelphia County from counting undated ballots just two weeks ago.
Fitzpatrick said several counties Casey won — including Bucks but also Centre and Philadelphia — either voted or publicly stated their intent to count undated ballots in defiance of the high-court ruling.
“We are simply asking for them to abide by the clear ruling of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court,” Fitzpatrick said during Thursday’s call.
The RNC and Pennsylvania GOP are separately appealing to the Supreme Court to block the counting of undated ballots in all Pennsylvania’s 67 counties.
RNC chairman Michael Whatley slammed Casey for using “scam lawyers” and “anti-democratic schemes” to “steal back a Senate seat which he lost decisively.”