HARRISBURG, Pa. — With a narrow margin in the race to become Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senator, the two major party candidates will have to wait a little longer for an official result.
"I think that this just proves how closely divided we are in Pennsylvania," said Dr. Alison Dagnes, chair of the Shippensburg University Political Science Department.
A little more than 27,000 votes separated the two candidates on Thursday with tens of thousands of ballots left to be counted.
On Wednesday, Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt announced the tallies were close enough to warrant an automatic recount in the race, familiar territory for one candidate.
"What’s so interesting is that the last time we had a recount also involved Dave McCormick because it was in 2022 during the primary election," Dagnes said.
McCormick appeared at Senate orientation this week and his campaign remains confident the Republican candidate’s lead will hold.
Campaign consultant Mark Harris telling reporters in a press call on Thursday, “There is no history in Pennsylvania or elsewhere where a lead of this size has been overcome in a recount.”
McCormick’s lawyers sued to challenge the counting of undated and misdated mail-in ballots in Bucks County and asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to reaffirm its decision that those ballots should not count.
"All of these lawsuits are there to do two things at the same time," Dagnes said. "The first is to make sure that the votes are counted and the second is to try and limit the amount of counting that can be done and that’s a tough line to walk."
McCormick’s lawyers also claim the Casey campaign is attempting to count ballots cast by unregistered voters, with a McCormick consultant telling reporters he’s “deeply disturbed by the Democrat’s legal efforts.”
In response, Casey campaign lawyer Adam Bonin told FOX43, “No one is trying to count votes from individuals who were not registered. This is categorically false. This is a blatant attempt by the GOP to lie and distract from their efforts to disenfranchise Pennsylvanians by throwing out votes from registered voters.”
The Casey campaign shared a letter with FOX43 it sent to the Lackawanna County Board of Elections asking it to double-check whether voters deemed ineligible by the county were registered.
It did not ask the board to count the ballots of unregistered voters.
"At the end of the day, the courts are going to make their decisions, and the counting will begin or end and we’ll find out who wins the recount soon enough," Dagnes said.
Some counties are expected to begin the recount as early as Friday.
They’ll have until November 26th to complete the count.
The Department of State will report the final tallies the following day.