Casey campaign, refusing to concede, accuses McCormick of trying to ‘disenfranchise’ voters with lawsuits

Three-term incumbent Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pennsylvania, has still refused to concede, and his campaign is now accusing Republican Senator-elect Dave McCormick of trying to “disenfranchise” voters with lawsuits. 

“David McCormick and his allies are trying to disenfranchise Pennsylvania voters with litigation designed to throw out large tranches of votes that they’ve admitted in legal filings could impact the outcome of the election,” Casey’s campaign manager Tiernan Donohue said in a statement. “Senator Casey wants all Pennsylvanians’ voices to be heard as local county election officials continue to count votes. This democratic process must be allowed to play out to determine the result of this election.”

Fox News Digital reached out to the McCormick campaign for comment, but they did not immediately respond.

As of Wednesday afternoon, McCormick was leading Casey by 29,338 votes, or a margin of 0.43%, according to the Pennsylvania election results website. If the margin remains below 0.5%, an automatic recount is triggered under Pennsylvania law. 

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On Friday, McCormick declared his victory in the race, but he also filed a pair of lawsuits against the Philadelphia County Board of Elections and its commissioners regarding an estimated 15,000-20,000 provisional ballots still being counted that could impact the outcome of the case. McCormick requested permission to “make global challenges to large groups of provisional ballots that share the same deficiencies,” such as missing or not matching signatures, and the lack of a secrecy envelope. 

McCormick also asked that any provisional ballots from voters “who had requested mail-in or absentee ballots be sequestered and held pending action from the U.S. Supreme Court, or, in the alternative, that a global challenge be permitted as to all such ballots.” In Genser v. Butler County, the state Supreme Court ruled last month that mail-in ballots that arrived on time but lacked dates or had the wrong dates on their envelopes could still be included in the vote count. 

The state GOP and the Republican National Committee filed a petition on Tuesday asking the state Supreme Court to reverse its decision, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported. 

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McCormick was leading by more than 30,000 votes when the AP called the race at 4:09 p.m. Thursday. Though there were an estimated 91,000 votes still outstanding at that time, the AP asserted that there were not enough in areas supporting Casey for him to make up the difference. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., initially declined to invite McCormick to the new-senator orientation this week, citing thousands of votes still yet to be counted. 

Amid pressure from GOP senators, Schumer on Tuesday agreed to invite McCormick, as well as Democratic Sen.-elect Ruben Gallego, whose Arizona race against Republican Kari Lake wasn’t called until Monday night. 

Fox News’ Deirdre Heavey contributed to this report.