HARRISBURG, Pa. (KYW Newsradio) — Pennsylvania counties must start the recount of the state’s U.S. Senate race by Wednesday.
Under Pennsylvania law, a mandatory recount is triggered if the unofficial results in a statewide race fall within a margin of less than 0.5%. Republican Dave McCormick’s 17,000-vote lead over Democrat Bob Casey is well within that zone.
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt says the recount has been triggered eight times since the law took effect in 2004. Four times, the trailing candidate opted to waive the recount. In the other four, the recount did not change the outcome of the race.
Senate president pro temp Kim Ward is among ranking Republicans who have called on Gov. Josh Shapiro to convince Casey’s campaign to concede the election, and waive the recount, and avoid the taxpayer expense.
Shapiro says that’s not up to him, it’s up the candidate.
“I would note, by the way, that Dave McCormick, when he was a failed candidate for Senate two years ago, also chose not to waive the recount in that race that will continue to play out.”
The price tag for McCormick’s recount in his 2022 GOP primary race against Mehmet Oz was just about $1,053,000, says Schmidt.
While the Supreme Court made it clear no mail-in ballots with incorrect dates are to be included in the total, court battles continue. Casey’s campaign had been suing to have provisional ballots with mistakes counted, arguing that those mistakes were made by poll workers not voters, and not counting them would violate the Constitution.
On Tuesday the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas ruled that the provisional ballots at issue did not contain the defects outlined in the state’s election code that should bar them from being counted, thereby saving 996 votes from being invalidated.
Even if the ballot-counting process this year is chaotic, there is hope that the bickering could produce a lasting result.
The legal challenges could lead to court decisions that dictate in future elections which ballots can and can't be tallied, said Jeff Reber, a Republican who chairs the elections reform committee for the statewide association representing county commissioners.
“No one thinks the recount is going to change the outcome of the election,” he said. "The real battle is which ballots will be counted because that could be a precedent-setting decision."
Counties have until noon on Tuesday, Nov. 26, to complete the recount.