Pennsylvania’s Democrats understand the assignment: find votes for outgoing election loser Sen. Bob Casey before the results are certified. After Democrat county commissioners blatantly ignored state election code and the Supreme Court by voting to count irregular ballots, Gov. Josh Shapiro and Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry have turned a blind eye to the decisions to defy the law. The Department of Justice does not seem to be interested either. No one with official authority is threatening consequences when election law is ignored.  

After all, Pennsylvania’s top elected officials are Democrats, and the bond of party is stronger than the will of the people — or the rule of law.

The race between Casey and Republican Dave McCormick was close enough to trigger a state recount expected to cost taxpayers more than $1 million. McCormick has been declared the winner by the Associated Press and last week he was invited to attend congressional orientations, but Casey will not concede the loss.

And with the recount underway, election officials in Bucks, Montgomery, Philadelphia, and Centre counties have said they intend to include in the count ballots that arrived with improper or no date. The practice is in defiance of state election law and recent state Supreme Court rulings.   

In a media call on Monday, RNC Chairman Michael Whatley noted that even though Republicans expect to maintain McCormick’s win, the actions taken by Democrats in the aftermath of the election cannot be ignored.

“They have taken every step that they can to try and engineer votes that would overturn this margin,” Whatley said on the media call. “The fact that the margin is large enough that it will not be overturned does not take away from the fact that these are improper actions that are being taken by the Bob Casey campaign, by his attorneys, and by these officials, and we have been very clear that we are going to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law, folks that are not following The law.”

“In Bucks County, we have a commissioner … blatantly stating that they’re going to count votes against the law in an illegal manner,” U.S. Rep. Dan Mueser, a Pennsylvania Republican said on the Monday media call. “Equally disturbing, is that no one within … the Democrat Party leadership … is stating anything about this. There’s no comment from Gov. Shapiro. There’s no comment on those statements from the Attorney General … [O]ur governor and attorney general won’t make a statement as the law is being defied because [Casey] is a member of their own party.”

The governor’s office did not respond to a request from The Federalist for comment on why Gov. Shapiro has not denounced counting disqualified ballots. Shapiro did campaign for Casey before the election.

A spokesman from the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office told The Federalist in an email it has not gotten involved with the legal matters regarding how counties are counting ballots that, by law, are to be discarded.

“This matter is already being litigated by the parties and interested entities in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. No state entity has been sued in that action, so our office does not have a client to represent,” the response read. “We will continue to monitor the situation and any developments that would prompt Office of Attorney General involvement.”

The Republican National Committee (RNC) has said numerous times that Casey does not have a mathematical path to victory.

Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.