(The Center Square) – There are simply not enough votes left for Bob Casey Jr., the incumbent Democratic U.S. senator demanding a recount in Pennsylvania.
So says campaign officials for Republican challenger Dave McCormick, who insist the senator-elect will maintain his 30,000-vote lead.
“There’s one inescapable truth in all of this. When counting is done, Dave will be winning by tens of thousands of votes,” said Mark Harris, the campaign’s chief strategist. “There is no path for Bob Casey to be leading heading into a recount. The math is simply not there for him.”
Multiple media outlets, including The Associated Press, reached the same conclusion last Thursday when declaring the former hedge fund CEO turned Republican nominee the winner.
In doing so, voters denied Casey a third term in Congress and ended his family’s six-decade presence in state and federal politics.
For their part, the Casey campaign will not concede until all ballots are counted, of which the state estimated Wednesday roughly 80,000 were outstanding across the commonwealth.
He also accused his McCormick of disenfranchising voters through legal challenges to undated or misdated ballots and those without secrecy envelopes. Others come from unregistered voters, according to county election workers.
“Dave McCormick and his allies are trying to disenfranchise Pennsylvania voters with litigation designed to throw out tranches of votes that they’ve admitted in legal filings could impact the outcome of the election,” said Tiernan Donohue, Casey’s campaign manager, in a statement to multiple media outlets.
“Senator Casey wants all Pennsylvanians’ voices to be heard as local county election officials continue to count votes. This process must be allowed to play out to determine the result of this election,” she said.
Harris clarified that the actual number of “countable ballots” remaining is far less than the state estimate by more than half, and that counties themselves set questionable ballots aside, as per state law.
Even so, Casey cannot shrink the margin of McCormick votes, even in deep blue counties that he carried on Election Day, Harris contends.
“They can spin it however they like, but there is zero, and I want to repeat zero, mathematical or statistical reason that they have a path to victory here,” he said.
The campaign estimates it legally challenged roughly 1,500 undated ballots and a few thousand attributed to unregistered voters. Harris said, despite the utmost confidence in McCormick’s victory, allowing county boards of election to count invalid votes would be akin to “tying four arms behind our backs.”
“Even if they won and upended everything we know about Pennsylvania elections, we would still be leading by a real and significant and unturnable margin,” Harris said. “No matter how they slice it, more people voted for Dave McCormick than Bob Casey.”
Counties must complete the recount, estimated to cost $1 million, by noon on Nov. 26 and send those results to the state the following day. Since 2004, eight races have been close enough to trigger automatic recounts, though only four candidates ever exercised the right. The results were reaffirmed in all four cases, including McCormick’s recount against Dr. Mehmet Oz in the 2022 Republican primary for U.S. Senate.
