Casey hasn’t conceded the Senate race. What ballots are left and will there be a recount?
The Associated Press has declared Republican Dave McCormick the winner of the U.S. Senate race, but a recount is still possible and Bob Casey has not yet conceded.
U.S. Sen. Bob Casey has not conceded his reelection bid, citing more than 100,000 ballots left to be counted in the state even as the Associated Press has called the race for Republican Dave McCormick.
Casey and his Democratic allies have persistently said they want all ballots to be counted and have signaled they believe what remains to count could still shift the balance of the race, which is currently separated by just over than 35,000 votes, around half a percent of the total vote.
Regardless of the AP call, county election offices still have lots of work to do tabulating results up and down the ballot. Officials are down to the final ballots that need extra work to determine if they’ll count and military and overseas ballots which are granted extra time to come back.
This work takes place in every election, and is not impacted by media calls or candidate concessions, it will just be subject to extra attention this year as the U.S. Senate race remains tight.
How many ballots remain?
In a statement Thursday, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt said that more than 100,000 ballots still need to be adjudicated in the state. However, some of those remaining ballots will ultimately be rejected.
Review of provisional ballots in the state begins on Friday.
What types of ballots still need to be counted?
Remaining ballots generally fall in four categories: provisional ballots, overseas ballots, outstanding Election Day ballots, and outstanding mail ballots.
Both parties are likely to fight intensely in court, and via challenges to election officials, over the fate of these remaining ballots.
Provisional ballots: Provisional ballots are ballots often cast in person by voters who encounter some issue with their mail ballot or at the polling place. Those reasons can included voters who submit a mail ballot but believe it may not be counted because of an error, voters who requested a mail ballot but chose not cast it, and voters who are not in their polling places poll book. Election officials must review provisional ballots individually to determine if they are valid. The counting or rejection of provisional ballots can be challenged and those challenges will be adjudicated in public hearings.
Overseas and military ballots: Under federal law military and overseas voters have until Nov. 12 to return their absentee ballots. Thousands of these ballots have not yet been returned to and counted in election offices, though it is unclear how many will arrive by the deadline.
Outstanding Election Day ballots: While the vast majority of election day ballots have been counted. But there is a large set of outstanding votes in deep-red Cambria County where issues with polling place scanners resulted in the hand counting of several ballots. As of Friday morning Cambria county had about 10% of ballots left to count, according to the New York Times.
Outstanding mail ballots: According to state data, as of 2:45 p.m. on Thursday 1.28% of mail ballots had not been counted. Uncounted mail ballots at this stage are primarily ballots that have been set aside for one reason or another. These include ballots where the county has not received verification of the voter’s ID. Those voters have until Nov. 12 to prove their identity. It also includes ballots without a secrecy envelope or a signature or without a date or an incorrect date. Without litigation to change it, state law requires that election officials reject these ballots, though election boards need to formally vote to take that step.
Where do counties stand?
While it is difficult to get a statewide sense of outstanding ballots this is what we know from the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh areas:
In Philadelphia, there are roughly 20,000 provisional ballots remaining, City Commissioner Seth Bluestein said.
In Allegheny County, home to Pittsburgh, officials posted to X on Thursday that staff had 12,680 provisional ballots to review and that 4,309 ballots had been sent to military and overseas voters.
Bucks County has roughly 5,200 provisional ballots remaining, 2,500 uncounted mail ballots and up to 3,000 military ballots according to a county spokesperson.
Chester County has more than 3,500 provisional ballots and more than 1,800 military and overseas ballots, a county spokesperson said.
Neil Makhija, the chair of the Montgomery County Board of Elections, posted to X on Thursday that his county has 6,500 provisional ballots and approximately 2,500 overseas and other ballots.
How do AP calls work?
The Associated Press has a long track record of accurately declaring winners, even in close elections. These calls have no legal weight, but they’re used by The Inquirer and other outlets to determine winners — as was the case with President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020, for example.
The Associated Press only declares a winner when it’s clear a candidate has won. That decision involved careful analysis of voting data and trends.
“The AP’s race calls are not predictions and are not based on speculation. They are declarations based on an analysis of vote results and other election data that one candidate has emerged as the winner and that no other candidate in the race will be able to overtake the winner once all the votes have been counted,” the AP wrote in a guide to its race calls.
In an article explaining the rationale for calling McCormick’s victory, the AP explained that there were not enough outstanding votes in areas supportive of Casey and noted that Casey won by significantly smaller margins this year in Philadelphia and Bucks Counties compared to his previous wins. At the time the AP said it estimated 91,000 outstanding votes.
Even when a race is within the margin for a recount, as the Senate race is, the AP will call it if it is clear that a recount wouldn’t change the outcome.
Will there be a recount?
Maybe.
Casey currently trails McCormick by around half a percent. If the candidates are separated by half a percent or less the Pennsylvania Secretary of State, Al Schmidt, must call a recount by the end of the day Thursday. The candidate with fewer votes, at this point Casey, will have until noon on Wednesday to ask Schmidt not to call a recount.
Schmidt must provide candidates with a 24 hour notice before calling a recount so we will know by 5 p.m. Wednesday if it is occurring.
However, if McCormick manages to grow his lead beyond a half percent by Thursday a recount will no longer be in order.
When would a recount occur?
State law requires that a recount begin by the third Wednesday after Election Day — in this case Nov. 20.
It must be finished by noon the following Tuesday, which would be Nov. 26.
How does the recount work?
Counties can either recount ballots by hand or run ballots through a machine of a different type. Most counties opt for machine recounts because hand counting is a long and tedious process.
Counties must hand recount ballots that the machines are unable to process because of issues with how voters marked them — like stray marks on the page or marking in the circle of more than one candidate in a single race.
The recount should run faster than counting on Election Day because counties do not have to perform the process of opening and flatting mail ballots.
Will a recount change the results?
Recounts rarely change the results of an election, but the vote totals will change by small amounts.
Any changes come largely as a result of how machines read over-votes and under-votes, ballots where machines may read stray marks differently. For instance, if a voter began to fill out a ballot for one candidate, and then sought to x out their original vote and filled in for another.
While one machine may flag that vote for human review, another may miss the markings and count the original vote. While hand counting those votes election workers are directed to determine the voter’s intent.