Democratic Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania conceded his re-election bid to Republican David McCormick on Thursday. A state-wide recount revealed no significant changes, and Casey’s campaign faced setbacks in court regarding the counting of certain ballots.
Casey’s concession comes over two weeks after Election Day, following a protracted ballot-counting process marked by lengthy election board meetings, social media uproar, lawsuits, and allegations that some county officials were not adhering to the law.
Republicans accused Democrats of attempting to steal McCormick’s seat by counting “illegal votes,” while Casey’s campaign alleged that Republicans were trying to block enough legitimate votes to prevent his victory.
In a statement, Casey, the longest-serving Democrat in Pennsylvania’s Senate history and a key figure in the state’s Democratic establishment, announced he had called McCormick to congratulate him.
Casey stated, “As the first count of ballots is completed, Pennsylvanians can move forward with the knowledge that their voices were heard, whether their vote was the first to be counted or the last.”
As of Thursday, McCormick led by approximately 16,000 votes out of nearly 7 million cast, a margin that fell within the 0.5% threshold for an automatic state-wide recount under Pennsylvania law. However, election officials did not expect the recount to change more than a few hundred votes, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected Casey’s requests to count mail-in ballots that lacked a correct handwritten date on the return envelope.
Meanwhile, Casey’s campaign succeeded in getting counties to count thousands of provisional ballots that might have been discarded due to election worker errors, including unprocessed voter registrations. However, they failed in efforts to count ballots disqualified for minor voter errors, such as not signing a provisional ballot in two places or not using the inner “secrecy” envelope.
McCormick, the former CEO of the world’s largest hedge fund, benefited from tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions from allies in the hedge fund and securities trading sectors, making this race the nation’s second-most expensive of the campaign cycle.
Frances Ibiefo
Follow us on:
