Incumbent Democratic Sen. Bob Casey finally conceded Pennsylvania’s Senate race on Thursday amidst his party’s efforts to allegedly count ballots the state Supreme Court deemed ineligible.
Casey, a three-term senator, posted a video to X earlier on Thursday officially conceding the race. He also called his rival Republican opponent, Senator-elect David McCormick, to congratulate him over winning, Fox News reported.
Of the nearly seven million votes cast, McCormick prevailed by roughly 16,000 votes in one of the country’s closest U.S. Senate elections, winning the seat by a margin of 0.2 percent, Associated Press projected.
Fox News explained that, under Pennsylvania law, an automatic recount is issued for all state elections under a half-point margins. The alleged one million dollar recount began Monday, and was due to end Nov. 26.
Casey came under fire over his refusal to concede and waive the costly recount, despite having no clear path to victory.
The Senate race garnered even more controversy as some Democrat officials seemingly opted to count ballots which the Democrat Pennsylvania Supreme Court deemed ineligible.
Shortly after the election, Democrat Bucks County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia voted to count provisional ballots that were missing one of the two required voter signatures, openly defying the state Supreme Court’s ruling which had banned tallying those votes,” Fox News reported.
“We all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country and people violate laws any time they want,” she said during a county election meeting. “So for me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention to it. There is nothing more important than counting votes.”
Ellis-Marseglia addressed her comments on Wednesday, explaining that her statements were “genuinely not the best words,” but that she “would do it all again,” though she “will be more clear in the future,” per Fox News.
After Democrat officials admitted they had been counting these ineligible ballots, the Republican National Committee filed suits against Bucks County and the state Supreme Court.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court then ruled again that these ballots could not be counted, and that election officials were to reject these ballots.
With McCormick’s victory, Republicans have a majority of 53 Senate seats to Democrats 47. The GOP previously flipped Democrat-held seats in West Virginia, Montana and Ohio this election cycle.