Election denialism is running deep in Pennsylvania.
Following the shock victory of Republican Dave McCormick over incumbent Democrat Bob Casey in the Pennsylvania Senate race, Democrats have taken to openly flouting the rule of law in attempting to count every illegal ballot they can find.
The situation became so dire that even the state Supreme Court, a bastion of liberal judges, unanimously told officials in Bucks County to stop counting ballots that could not legally be accepted. The law was already clear in stating that absentee ballots must contain several valid markers such as a proper date and identifying signature to be considered acceptable.
Several blue counties have thousands of ballots sitting around, for some reason, that do not contain proper markings and, under current state law, cannot be counted. Some localities decided to go ahead and try counting them anyway which drew multiple rebukes from the state’s high court, reports NPR:
In a new ruling on Monday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court directed all of the state’s county election officials not to count certain mail-in ballots for this year’s general election that arrived on time but in envelopes without the correct dates handwritten by voters.
The order, prompted by a request from the Republican National Committee and Pennsylvania’s Republican Party, is the latest development in a long-running legal battle over what to do when absentee voters don’t follow an artifact of the state’s election rules. The provision, which requires a voter to sign and date their ballot’s outer return envelope, has drawn a tangle of lawsuits since Pennsylvania started allowing no-excuse voting by mail in 2020.
The era of mail-in ballot fraud ended with Covid and it needs to be put to bed now. Luckily, Republicans are not taking the issue lying down and none of these counties are getting away with it.
Certain media outlets are framing the various rulings as a “blow” for Democrat Bob Casey. That’s simply the wrong way to look at it. The real truth is that by siding with the rule of law and holding that ballots without proper marking shouldn’t be accepted, the state Supreme Court is helping to ensure legal voters are not diluted and disenfranchised by invalid or corrupt ballots flooding the system.
Some county officials, such as Bucks County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia, have openly and joyfully admitted they are trying to count every ballot they can find because they don’t like the outcome:
Democratic county officials admit they are breaking the law to overturn Pennsylvania’s Senate election for losing Sen. Bob Casey.
“I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country,” said Bucks County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia, who voted Thursday to count deficient provisional ballots a Pennsylvania Supreme Court order barred, in which voters did not sign in one of two necessary boxes.
“People violate laws any time they want,” Ellis-Marseglia said. “So for me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention. There’s nothing more important than counting votes.”
The race has been called for several days making Dave McCormick the new Senator-elect from Pennsylvania. There is no path to victory for Bob Casey short of some revelation that 30,000 ballots were found left in a bathroom somewhere or the trunk of a car, an outcome Democrats are hoping and cheering for.
Casey has not conceded the race and is opting into a recount given the results are closer than 0.5%.
Even the Washington Post editorialized it’s time for Democrats to throw in the towel and concede the race:
In a piece titled “Democrats thumb their nose at the rule of law in Pennsylvania,” the WaPo editorial board wrote that election rules “must be applied equally and consistently.”
“Democrats would surely protest if a Republican commissioner made the same statement [as Ellis-Marseglia] to justify tipping the scales for their party’s Senate nominee — and they would be right,” the board said. “Elections need rules, established in advance of the voting, and those rules must be applied equally and consistently.”
It’s crystal clear that there must be guardrails in place to ensure proper election integrity. If mail-in or absentee ballots are not dated or do not have a valid signature, they cannot be counted, end of story.
Democrats have always been the party of election denialism since the 2000 recount sent the country into chaos. That level of insanity went into overdrive after Donald Trump’s 2016 victory when Hillary Clinton outright claimed Russia stole the election from her.
Ultimately, McCormick will prevail in Pennsylvania but Democrats are not going down with at least an attempt to steal a Republican victory.
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