Hypocritical, Lawless Elite Liberals Ignore PA Supreme Court, Count Ballots Missing Signatures

From [HERE] and [HERE] Before the Nov. 5 election, Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court ruled that provisional ballots must be signed in two required places and that mail-in votes must be dated. Yet elected Democratic officials in Philadelphia and three other counties — Bucks, Centre and Montgomery — voted this week to defy these and other court decisions at the request of lawyers for Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, who trails GOP challenger Dave McCormick by about 24,000 votes, with almost all of the roughly 7 million ballots cast having been counted. These Democrats’ decisions will almost certainly be overturned on appeal, but the mere attempt to defy judicial rulings is corrosive to democracy and invites similar behavior in future elections.

Bucks County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia, a Democrat, offered this breathtaking rationalization on Thursday: “I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country,” she said, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. “People violate laws anytime they want. So, for me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention. There’s nothing more important than counting votes.”

Democrats would surely protest if a Republican commissioner made the same statement to justify tipping the scales for their party’s Senate nominee — and they would be right. Elections need rules, established in advance of the voting, and those rules must be applied equally and consistently. Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court, by the way, includes five justices elected in partisan elections as Democrats and just two elected as Republicans. Even if that partisan balance were reversed, however, the court’s authority would be equally legitimate.

Counting mail and provisional ballots has been a contentious issue in Pennsylvania since the pandemic-year election of 2020. Though multiple lower courts have ruled that it’s unconstitutional or illegal not to count ballots lacking formally required signatures or dates, the state Supreme Court blocked those decisions from going into effect before Nov. 5 — most recently on Nov. 1. Democrats argue that they’re refusing to let constituents be deprived of their constitutional right to vote over an “immaterial” issue, as Montgomery County Commissioner Neil Makhija put it during a public meeting. His frustration is understandable, to a point. Votes are being discarded over seemingly mundane clerical errors. The Casey campaign notes that, two years ago, Mr. McCormick sued for an order to count undated or misdated mail ballots during his hard-fought GOP primary battle with Mehmet Oz (who eventually won the nomination), but now he’s arguing they should be invalid. Back then, it says, the McCormick campaign attacked the requirements it now defends as “games of ‘gotcha.’”

There’s hypocrisy on both sides of this dispute — this is politics, after all — but it is irrelevant to the legal merits. Mr. Makhija and other county officials do not get to decide whether a legal requirement is “material” and must be followed. Courts do. And they have spoken clearly.

Mr. Casey has almost certainly lost this race. The Associated Press called it for Mr. McCormick on Nov. 7. Mr. Casey’s deficit still appears insurmountable. The three-term incumbent sees it differently and has every right to plead his case in court. State law also entitles Mr. Casey to a statewide recount because Mr. McCormick’s margin of victory is smaller than half a percentage point, though not by much. A recount is unlikely to change the outcome.