Dave McCormick’s campaign declares victory — again

Dave McCormick’s top campaign strategist declared victory for his client in Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race, again. Lawyers for incumbent U.S. Sen. Robert P. Casey’s campaign battled in county courthouses across the state for dozens of votes here, hundreds there.

State officials, meanwhile, noted that with an automatic recount triggered, it will be Nov. 27 before anything is finally certified.

That was Thursday in the trench warfare that is the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race.

As of 5 p.m. Thursday, Republican McCormick was holding onto a 24,409-vote lead, or a margin of .35 percent.

According to data compiled by FairVote, an advocacy group election for better election policy for all, only three of 36 statewide elections across America that went to a recount between 2000 and 2023 saw a change in outcome; in all of those cases, the initial margin between the top two candidates was .06 percent or less.

McCormick aides declared Thursday that Casey, a three-term incumbent, has got no chance to get the margin down to that neighborhood.

By campaign strategist Mark Harris’s estimate, there are about 25,000 to 30,000 unchallenged ballots left to come into the count.

“They’re going to continue to gain a handful of thousands of votes as we move forward here just because of what is left,” he said, “but the inescapable reality is that tens of thousands of more Pennsylvanians voted for Dave McCormick than voted for Bob Casey.”

Everything else that’s still in play would be ballots that have been set-aside by local elections staffs because of errors or unresolved eligibility questions. Those are potential votes Casey’s team will have to fight to get back into the pool.

The Casey camp sees no reason to stop fighting now. In fact, they cloaked themselves Thursday in the noble cloak of champions for protecting the franchise for all voters.

Take this statement from Tiernan Donohue, Casey’s campaign manager: “While McCormick and his allies are working to disenfranchise voters in Pennsylvania and spread misinformation, we are working to ensure that Pennsylvanians’ voices are heard.”

They did that in various ways Thursday, from fighting for provisional ballots that they argue are being thrown out because of technical errors, to, potentially, seeking one more hearing on the eternal Pennsylvania issue of how to handle mail-in ballots that are not properly dated.

In Carlisle Thursday, an attorney for the Casey campaign asked the Cumberland County Board of Elections to count 52 provisional ballots that had been set aside because of improper signatures in an afternoon hearing.

Attorney Sam Milkes argued these voters may have gone to the polls that day not even knowing that they would be asked to cast a provisional ballot. As such, they were at the mercy of precinct election judges to make sure they did it right.

If they are otherwise properly registered voters, and “they did all that they thought they were supposed to do,” Milkes argued, those votes should be counted.

Board of Elections members, after a brief deliberation, rejected Casey’s argument. Democratic County Commissioner Jean Foschi, in explaining her vote, told Milkes she agreed with his argument but “the only way to fix this is through comprehensive election reform.”

The Casey campaign now has two days to appeal the Cumberland ruling in county court.

In other counties, the Casey campaign was asking election boards to re-examine voter registration rolls to pick up provisional voters that they are concerned may have had their votes set aside because they didn’t show up in the state’s SURE system.

On the statewide front, meanwhile, the McCormick campaign and its Republican allies asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to intervene to block a handful of counties - including heavily-Democratic Philadelphia - from including incorrectly dated mail-in ballots in their counts.

Philadelphia’s commissioners voted 2-1 Wednesday to do that, despite a Supreme Court ruling earlier this month in a separate case expressly telling counties that they were not to count undated ballots in this election. That could bring 645 additional votes into the pool in Philadelphia alone.

That prompted the Republican National Committee to file an emergency petition Thursday asking the court “to reaffirm its ruling that the date requirement is mandatory and must be enforced in this election.”

The good news for Casey, if you’re looking for it, is that the Democrat is beating McCormick in both categories where the eligibility wars are being fought.

Casey’s polling ahead of McCormick 64.2 percent to 33.7 percent statewide in mail-ins; in provisionals, the margin is Casey 59.1 percent, McCormick 36.8 percent.

The good news for McCormick, if you’re looking for it, is that even if Team Casey won all its fights in every courthouse and courtroom, if those two vote shares hold up, the former Wall Street hedge fund executive will still be ahead of Casey heading into the recount.

As Harris proclaimed Thursday: “There is no path for Bob Casey to be leading heading into the recount. the math is simply not there for him.”

McCormick keeps lead over Casey in Pa. Senate race as count grinds onNov. 12, 2024, 11:07 p.m.

How did Pa. Dems keep the state House during a red wave? Meet Frank Burns.Nov. 11, 2024, 4:50 a.m.

As definitive as McCormick’s camp has been this week, the final count is still being tabulated in many counties, and it will surely run into next week before all of the 67 county boards have certified their counts.

Counties have until Nov. 25 to submit final unofficial counts - outside of the recount - to the state.

"According to data compiled by FairVote, an advocacy group election for better election policy for all, only three of 36 statewide elections across America that went to a recount between 2000 and 2023 saw a change in outcome; in all of those cases, the initial margin between the top two candidates was .06 percent or less."

And what was one of those recounts?

Democrat Rita "RBF" Hart, who was Miller-Meeks [IA-2] opponent in 2020, where Nanzi declared that the race was "stolen". Imagine that. Nanzi flatly stated a 2020 race was "stolen", but that Biden's steal was legit.

You all read this and read this closely. The next time you read an #MSM article that says "far too little voter fraud" or "insufficient fraud to change the outcome", remember that Nanzi was ready to unseat Miller-Meeks in 2020 for 6 votes.

SIX VOTES, the same year she denounced Trump for asserting the 2020 election was stolen.

This ain't over, biotch. Not until you quit the House, and even then, this ain't over. "Back up that DePape statue, a little farther, put it on the driveway, yeah, that's good."

In 2020, the incredible machinations that Nanzi went to, to overturn Iowa (IA-2), where after Rep. Miller-Meeks claimed a 6-vote victory, Democrat Rita Hart would not accept any booby prize (the way Democrat Max Rose kowtowed in his NY-11 ultra-close loss, being appointed -- I kid you not -- "Special Advisor to the UnderSecretary for Defense for COVID-19").

Nanzi ordered no MSM coverage, other than ordaining herelf the sole point person on this story, fearing losing control of the #Narrative would allow someone (Rush RIP) to point out her hypocrisy, allowing Rita Hart to not only allege but pursue election fraud in Iowa; while Nanzi's MSM was busy libeling Trump for making identical accusations in (ahem) less-GOP ghettos than Iowa!
‘It’s Only Six Votes’: Pelosi Excuses Democrats From Launching Probe to Possibly Unseat GOP Member
Epoch Times | March 15, 2021 | JACK PHILLIPS
"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Sunday excused Democrats who launched an investigation into possibly unseating an elected GOP House representative, explaining that the margin of victory was extremely slim.
“It was six votes,” Pelosi told ABC News on Sunday, noting the number of votes by which Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa) defeated her Democratic opponent, Rita Hart.
Miller-Meeks was ultimately seated in Congress after votes were counted, recounted, and certified by the state. Several days ago, the House Administration Committee started a process that could lead to Miller-Meeks being unseated.
“It was six votes, and our candidate Rita Hart, the Democratic candidate asked for this process to begin,” Pelosi told ABC. “What the committee did, the House Administration Committee, was very narrow to take the process to the next step and see where it goes from there. An election of six votes out of 400,000 votes cast. This is not unique. This has happened, maybe even when you were in the Capitol before when races had been close one side or the others saying, let’s take it to the House.”
She said that former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia “agreed that the House has the authority to seat members,” meaning that “we can count the votes.”
Several days prior to her interview, Pelosi told reporters in a press conference that overturning the election in favor of Hart is a “hypothetical” situation but later said it’s possible.
“Well, I respect the work of the committee,” the California Democrat said on March 12. “I did see, as you saw in the press, what they decided to—and they were following my, as I read it, the requirements of the law as to how you go forward. And how you go forward is the path you’re on and we’ll see where that takes us. But there could be a scenario to that extent. Yes.”
Pelosi, with her Sunday comment, appeared to be echoing a statement sent out by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the chair of the House Administration Committee, to her members saying that “the margin separating the two candidates was only six votes out of almost 400,000 cast: less than 1/6 of 1 percent. That’s six votes—not 6,000; not 600; not 60 or even 16—just six fewer votes than we have members of this committee.”
Nobody made hay of this. NOBODY. As all this was going down in 2021, the very same weekend, Rudy missed an oppo on Steponallofus -- whose mantra "there was only a 'little' fraud" in 2020 -- to ram Rita Hart's assertion of electoral fraud in, of all places, IOWA, right down George's goddamn gullet.
Trump mentioned it once, so at least Stephen Miller put it on the teleprompter.
Proof of how much Rush is missed, he died almost exactly a month before this story came together, and he would have crushed the Democrats with their game-playing in IA-2, and frankly disarmed this entire evil afoot right down to DarkBrandon."

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