The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has sided with the campaign of Republican businessman Dave McCormick in ordering an immediate end to the deliberately unlawful vote-counting efforts of local officials counting votes in McCormick’s hotly contested U.S. Senate race.
Openly flouting a clear, earlier ruling of the state high court, officials in four counties had been tabulating ballots that lacked signatures or dates required by law.
The court’s new decision to block the officials was made 7-0 on the merits and 4-3 on procedural matters, with Justice David Wecht, a liberal with no love lost for the GOP, writing in concurrence:
“It is critical to the rule of law that individual counties and municipalities and their elected and appointed officials, like any other parties, obey orders of this Court. As Justice Felix Frankfurter once wrote: ‘If one man can be allowed to determine for himself what is law, every man can. That means first chaos, then tyranny. … The greater the power that defies law the less tolerant can this Court be of defiance.’”
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision came after Bucks County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia, a powerful Philadelphia collar-county Democrat, said, “I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country. People violate laws anytime they want. So, for me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention.”
Officials in Centre and Montgomery counties and in Philadelphia also were counting illegal ballots.
As of this writing, even including the wrongly counted ballots, incumbent Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) trails McCormick by 17,439 votes out of some 3.9 million cast. A recount of all ballots, pressed by Casey, began on Monday. If the state Supreme Court had let the illegal votes be counted, it certainly would look like what Casey long accused President-elect Donald Trump of being, namely “a threat to democracy.”
If officials in Bucks, Centre, and Montgomery counties had been allowed to continue their schemes, it could have set a precedent that could undermine the legitimacy of similar actions in future elections.
The Associated Press called the race for McCormick two days after the Nov. 5 election. Casey has refused to concede. Last week, the close margin of half a percentage point triggered the automatic allowance of the recount under Pennsylvania law. But Casey could have declined to ask for the recount, which will cost the taxpayers of Pennsylvania over $1 million, possibly more. Previous recounts have not come close to finding disparities anywhere near big enough for McCormick’s lead to be in question.
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The Washington Free Beacon is reporting that Casey helped elect Ellis-Marseglia and fellow commissioner Bob Harvie in their campaigns last year by attending a private fundraiser for Ellis-Marseglia and Harvie last October and encouraging his social media followers to donate to their campaigns.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) defended Casey’s refusal to disavow the illegal ballots, saying there weren’t enough of them to “have an impact on this race at this point.”
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
