Democratic senator John Fetterman downplayed the counting of illegal ballots in Pennsylvania's Senate race, saying it will not have an impact on the final outcome.
Pennsylvania's Democratic senator Bob Casey has refused to concede a race he lost to Republican Dave McCormick. The contest has grown contentious after Democrats in some counties were caught counting disqualified ballots.
The state's Democratically controlled Supreme Court on Monday rebuked Democrats in Philadelphia, Montgomery County, and Bucks County for counting incorrect ballots in defiance of the court's previous ruling, which said ballots with wrong or missing dates can't count.
Bucks County election commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia had offered a shockingly candid defense of the county's actions, saying "people violate laws anytime they want."
"So, for me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention to it," she said.
The brazen defiance of Bucks County has drawn criticism from the left-leaning Washington Post, which called Ellis-Marseglia's reasoning "corrosive to democracy."
Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro (D) also criticized the Democratic counties involved in the improper counting after the Supreme Court's rebuke.
"As we move forward, I want to be clear: any insinuation that our laws can be ignored or do not matter is irresponsible and does damage to faith in our electoral process," Shapiro said.
When pressed on the controversy by CNN's Jake Tapper, Fetterman dismissed the number of invalid ballots as insignificant even as he admitted the Senate race is "very, very close."
"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," Fetterman said.
Officials in Pennsylvania began a recount on Monday after McCormick won by 17,000 votes, below the threshold needed to trigger an automatic recount.
While Republicans have dismissed the recount as frivolous, Fetterman defended the effort to "count every vote." Fetterman also claimed that no one has actually alleged Democrats are "cheating" in Pennsylvania.
"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 that he’s going to do the right thing and concede. So that’s the thing."
By rationalizing the arguably criminal shenanigans in his state, Fetterman is proving that, while he can sometimes sound reasonable compared to other Democrats, he's still a partisan at the end of the day.
