John Fetterman Dismisses Contorversial Counting of Disqualified PA Senate Ballots When Pressed by CNN’s Jake Tapper: ‘Not Going to Have an Impact’
Senator John Fetterman dismissed the counting of provisional ballots in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on CNN Sunday and predicted Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) would concede to Republican Dave McCormick once a state-mandated recount of the state’s Senate race is completed.
McCormick was called the winner over his incumbent rival days ago by numerous outlets, but Casey has yet to concede the race.
Additionally, Bucks County election commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia drew the ire of The Washington Post when she said last week her county would count ballots without signatures in defiance of a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling.
On CNN’s State of the Union, host Jake Tapper asked Fetterman about Casey, the ballots, and how he thought the recount would play out.
“He’s trailing by 18,000 votes behind Dave McCormick,” Tapper noted of Casey. “Democratic officials in at least one key county, Bucks County, voted to count about 115 provisional ballots that miss. They’re missing a signature despite the Pennsylvania Supreme Court previously ruling that those are invalid.”
Tapper then aired comments from Ellis-Marseglia in which she said that “precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore” and that “people violate laws anytime they want.
She added, “For me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention to it.”
Tapper noted the Post‘s editorial board called the comments from Ellis-Marseglia “corrosive to democracy” and asked Fetterman for his take. The senator replied:
Well, again, I’m not going to chase every kinds of quotes, things like that, because I think you just pointed out that it refers to about 115 ballots. And that’s not going to have an impact on this race at this point. So, that’s where we are now? It’s very, very close. And I guarantee you, if if Dave McCormick were in the opposite situation where he was down 15-17,000 votes, he would absolutely want to have every last vote counted as well, too.
And Bob Casey has never claimed fraud. And I think it’s really interesting now, all of the Republicans and the conservative people on Twitter are talking about, they’re cheating, They’re having all kinds of things after Trump won. No one’s claiming that there’s any kinds of actual cheating on our side, you know, calling and counting every vote. And that’s where we’re at. And that’s the law. And when it’s finished and if Bob Casey comes up short, I can almost guarantee you that he’s going to do the right thing and concede.
Fetterman concluded that election officials were doing their jobs by counting “every last vote.”
Watch above via CNN.
