Philly recount underway in McCormick-Casey U.S. Senate Race

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A state-mandated recount of votes in the race for U.S. Senate between Democratic incumbent U.S. Sen. Bob Casey and Republican challenger Dave McCormick is underway in Philadelphia.

At the city’s election warehouse in the far Northeast section of the city, about 50 workers will spend up to 14 hours a day feeding ballots into scanners to re-tabulate the votes. The machines are different from the ones used on the initial count immediately after polls closed on Election Day.

“The Board of Elections will recount all in-person, mail, and provisional ballots, a process that is expected to last between two to four days,” said City Commissioners chair Omar Sabir.

The ballots are being unpacked from boxes and fed into the scanners and then returned to the boxes. A separate database will be used to tabulate the ballots, and the results will be made official during a post-election meeting of the city commissioners on Nov. 25.

“The recount will require fewer than 50 staff members. The staff will work 12 to 14 hours. The recount is expected to be completed within four days,” he said.

Representatives from both the Casey and McCormick campaigns will be given the opportunity to observe the recount process.

While the votes were being counted, Commissioner Lisa Deeley said McCormick’s win could easily have been a loss if more Philadelphians who came to the polls actually cast a vote in the race.

“Just 0.24% separate Bob Casey and Dave McCormick to determine who will represent Pennsylvania in the United States Senate for the next six years. That percentage translates to just 16,672 votes,” she said.

Deeley went on to say twice that number of voters didn’t care enough to go down the ballot to vote in the race for U.S. Senate.

“36,604 Philadelphia fans chose to under-vote the race. They just skipped over it and didn’t have their opinion counted,” she said.

Deeley could not give an explanation for why people came to vote for president, but chose not to vote in the Senate race.

“All of us in the political process, we need to do a better job to get the public to recognize the importance of the down ballot races so that we can have maximum voter participation from Philadelphia voters,” she said.