Senator Bob Casey is not giving up on retaining his seat in the US Senate. The three-term Democrat is currently locked in a tight race with Dave McCormick, trailing the Republican by just over 29,000 votes as of Wednesday at 4 p.m. CBS News has not published a projection in the race.
Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Al Schmidt announced Wednesday afternoon that the unofficial results of the race have led to a statewide recount.
That’s because the vote totals for McCormick and Casey are within a 0.5% margin, triggering a statewide recount under state law.
According to the State Department, Casey received 48.5% of the vote with 3,350,972 votes and McCormick received 48.93% with 3,380,310.
Counties must begin the recount by Nov. 20, the announcement said. The recount will cost more than $1 million in taxpayer money, the State Department says. Counties must complete the recount by noon on November 26 and report the results to the Secretary of the Commonwealth by noon on November 27. The results won’t be released until Nov. 27, the day before Thanksgiving, the department said.
McCormick’s spokesperson Elizabeth Gregory said in a statement Wednesday: “Senator-elect McCormick’s lead is insurmountable, which the AP made clear by calling the race. A recount will be a waste of time and taxpayer dollars, but it is the prerogative of Senator Casey.” -Elect McCormick knows what it’s like to lose an election and is confident that Senator Casey will ultimately come to the right conclusion.”
Casey’s campaign did not opt out of an automatic recount as of noon Wednesday, according to an earlier statement from the Pennsylvania Department of State.
Casey has not appeared in public since his election night watch party in Scranton, but he posted a video to his social media accounts on Tuesday.
“The American democratic process was born in Pennsylvania, and that process will play out,” he said in the video on X.
Meanwhile, McCormick is moving forward. The businessman declared victory during a speech in Pittsburgh on Friday, and he has spent this week in Washington going through the Senate orientation process.
“The people have spoken. There is a clear, clear victory,” McCormick said last week.
CBS News Philadelphia reached out to both campaigns on Wednesday, but neither made the candidates available to speak.
Casey’s campaign has said it is waiting for outstanding votes from across the state, from mail-in ballots to overseas votes, military votes and provisional ballots. In Philadelphia, the state’s largest county and a county where Casey collected more than 78% of the vote, commissioners say ballot dropouts there are becoming scarce.
“We had about 20,000 provisional ballots to start with. We have already counted 11,000,” City Commissioner Seth Bluestein said Wednesday.
Bluestein told CBS News Philadelphia that the Board of Elections completed voting on the outstanding mail-in ballots on Wednesday. He says a few thousand could not be counted for various reasons, usually due to the lack of a signature or a non-disclosure envelope.
As for the remaining provisional ballots, Bluestein said the board will consider them Friday. But he warned: “Most of those probably won’t end up being counted.”
The Department of Statistics says there are approximately 60,366 uncounted provisional ballots and 20,155 uncounted mail-in and absentee ballots. That includes ballots for which officials have yet to determine their eligibility or validity.
