Wednesday’s Bucks County Commissioners meeting was as packed and as raucous as one might expect it to be one week after the two Democrats on the three-member board vowed to break the law and count votes that were deemed by the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court to be illegal.
It’s a State Supreme Court that is 5-2 majority Democrat.
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At the center of the controversy here was commission chair Diane Ellis-Marseglia, who began Wednesday’s meeting apologizing for the comments she made last week favoring the counting of provisional ballots missing signatures, even after the deputy solicitor of the county recommended explicitly that they not do that.
“We all know precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country,” Ellis-Marseglia said at last week’s elections meeting. “If I violate this law, it’s because I want the court to pay attention. There is nothing more important than counting votes.”
“People violate laws any time they want,” she added.
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In response to her defiance, along with Montgomery and Centre counties in Pennsylvania doing the same thing, the state Supreme Court in a new ruling showed a state of aggravation for having to tell so called professionals that, no, you cannot break the law.
Ellis-Marseglia apology was not without controversy, as she instead took aim at her unhappiness with a previous ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court having to do with abortion, which caused the crowd to admonisher her for the foolishness of the statement.
Elections have consequences. How you accept a loss also does; and it may affect others if you do not handle it with the grace and composure it deserves.
Democrat Bob Casey Jr., has served in public office in this state since taking the oath of office as the state auditor general in 1997, serving two terms in that office, a partial term as state treasurer and three full terms as Pennsylvania’s United States Senator, has not just hurt his own name in how he has handled his defeat over two weeks ago. He also has hurt other Democrats in the state in his wake.
Ellis-Marseglia will more than likely face a rough reelection if she seeks one, thanks to her decision to irrationally react to a fellow Democrat’s potential loss and attempt to illegally process votes for. She did it for Casey, whom she has supported over the years and who held a fundraiser for her and fellow Democratic commissioner Bob Harvie as recently as last October. Casey also urged his social media followers to donate to their campaigns.
When they won, Casey celebrated their victories on X and thanked voters who “turned out to reject extremism at the ballot box.”
Casey’s unwillingness to concede has forced Gov. Josh Shapiro to get involved by admonishing the law-breaking by all those who were counting illegal ballots. The popular governor’s X account on posts he does showcasing policy has taken hits for the behavior of those counties and for Casey.
Casey has forced fellow Sen. John Fetterman to tell reporters with a straight face on Capitol Hill yesterday that “it’s very, very close. And I guarantee you iff Dave McCormick were in the opposite situation where he was down 15 to 17,000 votes, he would absolutely want to have every last vote, counted as well, too. And if Bob Casey, comes up short, I can almost guarantee you that he’s going to do the, the right thing and concede.”
As study done by Bryan Huang, a software engineer and research analyst at FairVote, showed that statewide recounts are rare. In fact, out of the 6,929 statewide general elections between 2000 and 2023, there were only 36 statewide recounts.
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Outcome reversals, Huang said, were even rarer: Recounts resulted in only three reversals, or one out of every 2,310 statewide elections with all three of those three reversals occurring when the initial margin was less than 0.06% of all votes cast for the top two candidates.
Huang’s analysis showed that recounts tend to shift only a small number of votes with an average margin shift of 551 votes between the two candidates. There are more than 17,000 votes separating Casey and Republican Army veteran and Pittsburgh businessman Dave McCormick, the likely winner.
On Wednesday, four counties completed their recounts with really no change in the count; McCormick gained six new votes, Casey seven. The day before, four other counties completed their recount: Casey gained five votes, McCormick gained one. On Thursday, in eight counties, McCormick gained a net of 14 votes.
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On Tuesday, November 26, the recount will be done. McCormick will have still won. Casey will have still lost. And one million plus dollars of Pennsylvania taxpayers’ money will have been spent with little changing since the recount began.
Why Casey has spent all of his remaining political capital in this manner, knowing he lost, knowing that it potentially takes others down with him, at least short term, is not the legacy most Democrats who supported him for years expected. A possible reason could be that he has done it to set legal precedents to weaken Pennsylvania’s ballot laws. If that is true, it is even worse than just hanging on to hang on.