Dave McCormick has been declared the winner in race against U.S. Sen. Bob Casey. But he’s still challenging ballots in Philly.
Casey, the incumbent Democrat, has not conceded to his GOP opponent, who was leading Friday evening by a slim margin of roughly 37,000 votes.
Is Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race over? It depends on whom you ask.
And for Republican Dave McCormick, declared the winner by The Associated Press on Thursday, the answer appears to be both yes and no.
At a news conference Friday in Pittsburgh, McCormick declared victory and vowed to work with officials from both parties to secure the border and improve the economy.
“I don’t care who voted for me and didn’t vote for me,” McCormick said. “Today, I turn the page. I am focused on serving every single Pennsylvanian.”
But just hours earlier, he was selling a slightly different story in a Philadelphia court. McCormick, in a pair of petitions filed late Thursday, signaled his intent to potentially challenge tens of thousands of provisional ballots cast in the city, saying that counting those votes and others like them could “impact … the outcome of the election.”
Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr. has not conceded, despite the AP’s call. And with the race’s margins down to roughly 37,000 votes separating the candidates as of Friday evening, he remained hopeful there was still a chance those ballots could help him regain an edge.
“The number of provisional ballots expected from areas that favor Senator Casey, like Philadelphia and its suburbs, is further proof that this race is too close to be called,” Casey spokesperson Maddy McDaniel said Friday. “As the McCormick campaign admitted in their own lawsuit this morning, the counting of these ballots could have an ‘impact on the outcome of the election.’”
» READ MORE: Casey hasn’t conceded the Senate race. What ballots are left and will there be a recount?
Even if provisional votes don’t help Casey make up the difference, they could be enough to trigger automatic recount provisions under Pennsylvania law in races decided by 0.5% or less. As of Friday, that margin hovered around 0.54%, just outside that range. Whether a recount will happen likely won’t be announced until Wednesday.
Still, Casey faces an uphill battle to keep the seat he has held since 2007. Recounts typically result in small changes to each candidate’s vote total. But because those changes can happen in either direction, they rarely alter the outcome of an election unless it was virtually tied heading into the recount.
Casey would need to dominate the remaining ballots to be counted between now and Wednesday to make it close headed into the recount.
As of Friday morning, county officials indicated there are roughly 45,000 ballots that still need to be tallied in Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, and Montgomery Counties. In Allegheny County, home to Pittsburgh, officials reported 16,989 ballots yet to be counted.
However, some of those ballots may ultimately be rejected for procedural flaws. That number also includes an unknown number of military and overseas ballots that have not yet been returned but will still count if they arrive by Nov. 12.
Tens of thousands of voters cast provisional ballots each election for a number of reasons, ranging from confusion over whether they are registered to vote to instances in which someone may have submitted a flawed mail ballot that was rejected but later showed up to vote at the polls.
County election workers typically hold off on reviewing such ballots until they can verify voter’s eligibility and determine whether their ballots should count.
Philadelphia’s City Commissioners began that process Friday morning, reviewing provisional ballots — and determining which of the roughly 20,000 cast by city voters should count and which should be rejected.
In court filings Thursday, McCormick asked a judge to mandate additional Republican access to the canvassing of those provisional ballots in Philadelphia — a request Common Pleas Court Judge Jessica Brown denied Friday morning.
Separately, the McCormick campaign sought an order allowing it to challenge provisional ballots in broad categories instead of fighting them one-by-one in front of the city’s election board.
Campaign attorneys have also asked to sequester an unspecified number of provisional ballots that were cast at the polls by voters who’d previously submitted mail ballots that were rejected for procedural defects such as missing dates or secrecy envelopes.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled last month that those provisional ballots should count, rebuffing a Republican push for their exclusion under the argument that those voters had already voted by submitting a ballot — even a rejected one — by mail.
The GOP appealed that order to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to take up the case for now. But three of the court’s conservative justices — Samuel A. Alito Jr., Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch — signaled a potential willingness to reconsider the issue after the election, calling it “a matter of considerable importance.”
Whether the tight Pennsylvania Senate race could be the vehicle for taking that issue back to the nation’s highest court remains to be seen. But in his filing Thursday, McCormick signaled he was prepared to make it one, if necessary.
“Such a matter is ripe for appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court,” he wrote.
Read the petition: