Plus, did Kamala Harris only win states without voter ID laws?
I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”
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Today's read: 14 minutes.
Big money in the 2024 election.
In this Friday’s member-only edition, we’re publishing the transcript of our interview with David O’Brien, the policy director at RepresentUs, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for reforms to address corruption and ineffectiveness in government. We spoke with David about the role that Super PACs played in the 2024 election and his efforts to limit the influence of money in politics. It’s a topic that’s right up Tangle’s alley, and we’re excited to share the interview with you.
Quick hits.
- President-elect Donald Trump announced former administrator of the Small Business Administration and former Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon as his pick for education secretary. (The nomination) Separately, Trump announced television personality and former Senate candidate Mehmet Oz as his pick to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (The nomination)
- The Biden administration agreed to send antipersonnel land mines to Ukraine for the first time. The weapons are opposed by arms-control groups for their propensity to cause high civilian casualties. (The decision)
- 45 activists in Hong Kong were sentenced to multi-year prison terms for their roles in pro-democracy protests in 2019. (The sentences)
- Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) suggested that sentencing in President-elect Trump’s “hush money” case could be postponed until after Trump’s term ends in 2029. Judge Juan Merchan will now decide how to proceed with the case. (The latest)
- A major storm, known as a “bomb cyclone,” killed at least one person and knocked out power for roughly 600,000 houses in the northwest U.S. The Weather Prediction Center issued excessive rainfall risks through Friday. (The storm)
Today's topic.
The Pennsylvania Senate race. On Monday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that undated or misdated mail ballots should not be counted in the 2024 election, reaffirming a prior decision and hampering Sen. Bob Casey’s (D) efforts to challenge the results of his race with Dave McCormick (R). The Associated Press and other outlets have called the race for McCormick, and he attended the Senate’s orientation for new members last week.
Back up: McCormick leads Casey by roughly 16,000 votes with 99.8% of the vote counted and an estimated 72,000 ballots still to be adjudicated. Under Pennsylvania law, elections decided by 0.5% or less trigger an automatic recount, though trailing candidates can waive their right to a recount. Casey has not, and counties must now complete their recount by November 26.
Separately, election officials in Bucks, Philadelphia, Centre, and Montgomery counties voted last week to defy a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling from earlier this year that invalidated mail-in ballots with incorrect dates on the outer envelope. Bucks County Board of Commissioners Chair Diane Ellis-Marseglia (D) sparked controversy when explaining her rationale for ignoring that ruling. “People violate laws any time they want,” Ellis-Marseglia said. “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.”
Republicans challenged the officials’ decision, and the state Supreme Court, which is made up of five Democrats and two Republicans, upheld its prior ruling and instructed all county officials to comply.
The issue of whether to count mail-in ballots spoiled by minor voter or clerical errors has animated Pennsylvania courts for several election cycles. Lower courts have previously ruled that an otherwise legal vote should not be thrown away due to a clerical error, but the state Supreme Court overruled those decisions (citing procedural flaws) and declined to resolve the case before the election.
Since Election Day, both campaigns have challenged thousands of contested ballots. Democrats have filed appeals to allow more than 3,000 excluded provisional ballots to be counted, while Republicans filed lawsuits appealing the inclusion of more than 1,800 provisional ballots. Although Casey’s path to victory has been effectively eliminated, his campaign contends that he can still win through a combination of legal challenges and the statewide recount.
Today, we’ll explore arguments from the right and left about the state Supreme Court’s decision and Sen. Casey’s attempts to challenge the election results. Then, my take.
What the right is saying.
- The right lambasts Casey and Pennsylvania Democrats for their efforts to challenge the election results.
- Some note that Casey’s only remaining option to change the result is to count illegal ballots.
- Others call on Democratic state leaders to rebuke Casey’s tactics.
In National Review, Jeffrey Blehar said Casey needs to “go away.”
“The Pennsylvania supreme court has spoken — spoken again, spoken with exasperation, spoken for the third time during the election cycle — and has finally lowered the boom on Senator Bob Casey Jr.’s futile attempts to fight his loss to Dave McCormick in the 2024 Pennsylvania Senate election,” Blehar wrote. “McCormick currently leads Casey by around 17,000 votes, with nearly all valid ballots counted. All that remains to be counted are invalid ballots — those rejected for facial invalidity in one way or another, most often for missing signatures or missing date marks.”
“Pennsylvania law and case law specifically stipulate that such ballots are invalid. The matter had already been litigated before the state supreme court twice before Election Day — and both times the court insisted that no, the law meant exactly what it said: Undated absentee or mail ballots are presumptively invalid,” Blehar said. “With any luck, this finally tolls the end of the McCormick/Casey race, but nothing is official until Casey concedes. Let us just marvel at how quickly the Democrats have switched sides with those who denied Trump’s loss in states such as Georgia and Arizona back in 2020.”
In The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Jessica Furst Johnson argued “Bob Casey wants to win with illegal votes.”
“Casey’s legal team is led by the same lawyer that dragged the state of Florida through an automatic recount in 2018, despite an insurmountable 12,562 votes separating now-Senator Rick Scott from Bill Nelson. The strategy was two-fold: argue that established state election laws are suddenly unworkable and discriminatory, and demand that anything resembling a ballot be counted, with little regard for whether the voter was qualified under law, or whether the vote was timely cast,” Johnson wrote. “In other words, facing that great of a deficit, the only option is to change the law or count otherwise illegal votes.”
“Prior to Election Day, applicable Pennsylvania law inarguably required that provisional ballots be signed by the voter, and that absentee ballots be dated in order to be counted,” Johnson said. “Yet, facing the loss of office, and desperately wanting a bright spot in an otherwise nightmarish election cycle, Bob Casey and his legal team are willing to disregard state law, thereby cancelling out the ballots of valid Pennsylvania voters with ballots that fail to meet the requirements set forth by the state’s elected lawmakers and judiciary. It’s not changing the rules of the game midway through. It’s changing the name of the winner after the stadium lights are turned off and the fans all went home.”
In The American Spectator, Scott McKay wrote about Josh Shapiro’s “major opportunity” in the election dispute.
“Shapiro has a lane to presidential victory in 2028, which is to make the public believe he isn’t an Obama Democrat, but rather a Rust Belt version of a Bill Clinton New Democrat, perhaps cleaner and more professional and managerial, less hostile to business interests, and more respectful of the rule of law,” McKay said. “The attempted steal in Pennsylvania is something of a crucible for him. Because as this goes on, the message it’s sending is that the Democrats are corrupt and power-addicted like the worst of the Third World kleptocrats, which is exactly what the voters rejected on Nov. 5. The toxicity of this can’t really be understated, and that dirt will cover everyone involved.”
“Or there’s another option, which is to say, essentially, ‘I’m a loyal Democrat and I want all the legal ballots counted, but fair is fair and there is simply a length to which I will not go,’ and to come out against the attempted steal and demand that Casey concede,” McKay wrote. “Doing that would set off a little earthquake in the party. It would repudiate the Obamunist wing at a time when the public has already done so. It would make Josh Shapiro interesting, and it would also position him to be the leader willing to make hard choices and stand on principle, that his party is casting about for.”
What the left is saying.
- Most on the left are critical of county officials’ disregard for the state Supreme Court’s order on invalid ballots.
- Sen. Casey and his defenders argue they are fighting against the disenfranchisement of voters who made small clerical errors on their ballots.
- Others bemoan the optics of Casey’s election challenge.
The Washington Post editorial board wrote “Democrats thumb their nose at the rule of law in Pennsylvania.”
“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,” the board said. “The mere attempt to defy judicial rulings is corrosive to democracy and invites similar behavior in future elections.”
“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,” the board wrote. “There’s hypocrisy on both sides of this dispute — this is politics, after all — but it is irrelevant to the legal merits… county officials do not get to decide whether a legal requirement is ‘material’ and must be followed. Courts do. And they have spoken clearly.”
In PennLive, Sen. Bob Casey argued “we must value democracy more than expediency.”
“As Pennsylvanians wait to learn the final result of this very close Senate election, there has been extensive commentary about why I have not yet conceded. The answer is simple: Pennsylvanians deserve to have their voices heard, and the worth of someone’s vote is not determined by how long it takes to be counted,” Casey said. “There are thousands of eligible voters who cast their ballot but made small errors that would have disenfranchised them if they weren’t able to correct them by their county’s deadline. Most counties allow up to a week for voters to correct these minor errors in a process known as curing ballots.”
“This close race has also put a spotlight on undated mail ballots, as my opponent and his allies have filed an appeal with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to disqualify mail ballots where a voter has accidentally written the date wrong or didn’t write a date at all. Undated mail ballots have long been at issue in Pennsylvania’s elections. Gov. Wolf’s administration advocated to have these ballots count, as has Secretary of State Al Schmidt, and even my opponent himself,” Casey wrote. “At its core, this is a debate about the constitutionality of disenfranchising thousands of voters due to a requirement that has no bearing on a voter’s eligibility and has no impact in deterring fraud.”
In The Philadelphia Citizen, Larry Platt said Casey’s attempt to keep his seat “is not a good look.”
“The central question for Democrats everywhere nowadays just may be this: Do we have to become Trump in order to beat him? You know, get down in the muck, rule of law and even civility be damned. Can Democrats remain principled and still ultimately win — or have we officially entered a new era of political zero sum, eye-for-eye warfare? I fear that Sen. Bob Casey, of all people, might be answering just that question right now, at our collective peril,” Platt wrote. “It is, of course, Casey’s right to exhaust every legal means at his disposal in order to, as his still-relentless fundraising emails put it, make sure that every vote is counted. But it turns out that some extra-legal means might also be in play.”
“Democrats should be looking inward, asking themselves why the majority of the country prefers a convicted felon whose last term ended in historic disapproval ratings over what they’re selling. They should not be borrowing from said Dear Leader’s playbook,” Platt said. “Trump has mastered this art of political ‘I know you are, but what am I?’ So now we have a Casey loyalist arguing to defy a court order and Casey’s silence in response. Could you help the Fox News message machine more, as it purposefully muddies the water as to which side really practices election interference?”
My take.
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- To state the obvious, county officials were wrong and I’m glad the state court reaffirmed its ruling.
- Casey is within his rights to pursue legal challenges and allow a recount, but those who knowingly broke the law is another story.
- The best thing that could come out of this is Pennsylvania fixing the ambiguities in its system.
I want to start out by stating what should be obvious: Pennsylvania county election officials were wrong to openly disregard the state Supreme Court’s ruling.
In fact, Bucks County Board of Commissioners Chair Diane Ellis-Marseglia’s suggestion that “precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country” is one of the most egregious statements from an elected official that I’ve heard in my career covering politics. Ellis-Marseglia is now trying to walk the comment back, but the damage is done. Republicans are rightfully calling out the hypocrisy of Democratic officials ignoring the law when it doesn’t suit them, and I’m glad to see principled voices on the left condemn these actions, too.
In fairness to Casey, he’s within his rights to pursue a recount and push for the inclusion of the remaining provisional ballots. Republicans did something similar in 2020, challenging the legality of the election process after Donald Trump lost the state. Pennsylvania Republicans were also among those who took part in Trump’s “alternate electors” scheme, with national Republicans asking Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation to reject electors for Joe Biden over their objections to the state’s vote-by-mail law.
Just over two weeks ago, I actually spoke to one of those electors — chair of the Bucks County Republican Committee Patricia Poprik. She told me that while she felt the challenges to the state’s election result were merited in 2020, that she always intended to adhere to whatever the court ruled, and that she expected Democrats would have done the same. That’s a fair stance to me.
In that same spirit, it’s not hard to imagine Republican officials — pressured by Trump and the RNC — acting similarly to help McCormick if he had been the one trailing. However, in the real world, Democrats are the ones actually doing that. Regardless of how you feel about whether an incorrect date on a mail-in ballot should be grounds for rejection (I’ll get to that in a bit), the state Supreme Court’s ruling could not have been more clear: These ballots cannot, and will not, be counted. Defying the law so brazenly had a miniscule chance of helping Casey, and only affirms Americans’ concerns about election integrity and conservatives’ worries about Democrats’ willingness to “steal” an election.
Now, Casey has put himself in an impossible spot: Distance yourself from the county election officials, but still claim you’re just trying to count all the ballots. The situation is just as bad for Democrats writ large, who ran on “protecting democracy” and are now relying on illegally counted ballots to try to eke out one more Senate seat. Democratic elections lawyer Marc Elias, who’s representing Casey, literally runs a media platform called Democracy Docket, which is publishing articles criticizing Republican Eric Hovde for refusing to concede to Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin’s Senate race. To be clear, I think Elias is acting properly in representing Casey, but you couldn’t ask for a clearer representation of the dilemma Pennsylvania Democrats are in right now.
Still, if they want to, Democrats could avoid the dilemma altogether by simply dropping this lost cause. History suggests neither a recount nor further litigation will reverse the outcome. As Jessica Furst Johnson notes (under “What the right is saying”), “Of the 36 recounts in U.S. statewide elections between 2000 and 2023, only three resulted in a different outcome, and the difference between the candidates in each of the three races was under 300 votes at the start. As I write, McCormick leads Casey by over 16,000 votes, or more than 50 times the amount of any result-changing electoral differential in the last 23 years.” What’s more, even if all the disputed ballots were counted, McCormick would still win. If I had Casey’s ear, I’d advise him to concede now, while he can still salvage a modicum of grace.
All that said, this saga doesn’t degrade my confidence in our elections — if anything, it strengthens it. While I would obviously prefer rogue election officials not to run afoul of the law, the Democrat-majority court acted swiftly to ensure the rules were being followed. Whenever Casey’s challenges are eventually exhausted (or he concedes), McCormick will be seated as the state’s next senator. In other words, even in an instance of a glaring abuse of power, our system has held strong.
After following this story for the past week, it’s abundantly clear that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court needs to rule definitively on improperly dated mail-in ballots before the next election. It’s worth noting that, for all this turmoil, we could be right back here again in 2028; the state Supreme Court didn’t overrule the lower court’s decision to allow these ballots to be counted because it disagreed with their reasoning, but simply because of a procedural flaw in the case. Now that the election is over, the justices should take up the case again and rule on the merits. The best thing that could come from this story would be the courts and state lawmakers resolving outstanding issues with how mail-in and provisional ballots are counted so we can prevent these issues from ever reoccurring.
And, to put my cards on the table: I think these ballots should count, and voters should be given the opportunity to cure their ballots in every Pennsylvania county. Poprik (the Bucks County Republican Committee chair) actually made this point in our interview, arguing that as long as a voter gets their ballot back in time, a date error on their ballot shouldn’t invalidate their vote. In 2020, my mom incorrectly submitted a ballot in Bucks County, and I was glad she had an opportunity to cure it. Mistakes happen, even for experienced voters, and we should craft our laws in a way that allows everyone the chance to have their voice be heard.
For now, I’m glad to see the court shut down this effort for what it is: an attempt to undermine a fair election. Hopefully they bring some more clarity to future elections, too.
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Your questions, answered.
Q: I was wondering if you had any insight as to the argument that Harris only won states with no voter ID laws. This does seem to be the case, unless I’m misreading data. My real question about that is: do we know if there is any validity to the idea she only won those states because of the laws surrounding voter ID?
— Alex from Indianapolis, IN
Tangle: Before going any further, no, it’s not true that Harris only won states without voter ID laws. Among the states she carried, New Hampshire and Rhode Island require a photo ID to vote, while Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, and Virginia all require some form of ID. Furthermore, Donald Trump won two crucial swing states that do not require ID to vote — Pennsylvania and Nevada — which further pushes back against the idea that a lack of security opened the door to fraud, which is the only way Harris could have competed in the election.
But let’s cede the point that Harris won a majority of the states that have no voter ID laws, while Trump won a majority of the ones that do. Even then, the framing still falls flat, for two reasons.
First, causation isn’t correlation. Harris didn’t win states without voter ID laws because of fraud, she won them because the states that are predisposed to block voter ID laws are the same ones that tend to vote for Democrats. For instance, I could also point out that Harris won 18 of the 20 states (all but Nevada and Michigan) that had some constitutional protections for the right to abortion; that wouldn't really tell us much except that Democrat-led states that pass Democratic agenda items tend to vote for Democrats.
Second, people who push back against these laws aren’t pro-fraud; I don’t agree fully with their stance, but there are good-faith reasons to oppose voter ID laws. And there really just wasn’t any evidence of widespread voter fraud in this year’s election. I’ve looked into claim after claim about this; it happens, it’s rare, and there has yet to be fraud widespread enough to change the outcome of any national election. I’m always willing to investigate claims of fraud, and to be sure there have been some genuine examples — many of which have been caught through the audit process. But there simply isn’t any good reason to think a lack of voter ID laws directly contributed to fraud that allowed Harris to win the states she won in 2024.
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Under the radar.
The Trump administration plans to make wider adoption of self-driving vehicles a priority for the Department of Transportation, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The federal government currently has strict rules regulating the deployment of autonomous cars, but the president-elect’s transition team is working to staff the department with new leaders to develop a framework for adopting these vehicles at scale. Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and one of Trump’s most prominent supporters, has invested heavily in self-driving technology for his company’s cars, and Trump’s plans for the industry are expected to benefit that technology (which is also a focus of Waymo and Cruise, two other industry leaders). Bloomberg has the story.
Numbers.
- 621,637. Dave McCormick’s lead over Bob Casey in in-person votes that have been counted as of November 18 in the Pennsylvania Senate race.
- 592,788. Casey’s lead over McCormick in mail ballots that have been counted as of November 18.
- 11,060. Casey’s lead over McCormick in provisional ballots that have been counted to date.
- 326 and 288. The number of votes that Casey and McCormick, respectively, would have gained if Bucks County had counted undated mail-in ballots, according to the Bucks County election board.
- 36. The number of statewide election recounts between 2000 and 2023, out of 6,929 general elections.
- 3. The number of statewide recounts that resulted in changed outcomes between 2000 and 2023.
- 2008. The year of the most recent reversal of an election outcome due to statewide recount (Al Franken (D) defeated Norm Coleman (R) for Minnesota’s Senate seat).
- 551. The average margin shift in votes resulting from statewide recounts between 2000 and 2023.
The extras.
- One year ago today we wrote about Congress passing a temporary funding bill.
- The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the E. Coli outbreak in carrots.
- Nothing to do with politics: The results of an AI-art Turing Test.
- Yesterday’s survey: 1,820 readers responded to our survey asking about Biden’s decision to authorize Ukraine to use long-range weapons to strike within Russia with 68% supporting the decision but thinking it came too late. “I'm inclined to agree with your take, but with reservations. It's possible that if the U.S. had allowed Ukraine to get whatever it wanted and use it however it wanted, right away, the speed and scale of the escalation would have prompted a real and frightening response from Russia, instead of the tit-for-tat and saber-rattling we've seen,” one respondent said.
Have a nice day.
When Vamarr Hunter learned he had been adopted as a child, he underwent genetic testing in an effort to seek out his birth mother. To his surprise, he learned his mother, Lenore Lindsay, lived in his same Chicago neighborhood and owned a bakery that Hunter frequented. Their reunion led to a close bond, and to Hunter helping Lindsay with the bakery. Lindsay described her excitement at coming in contact with Hunter by saying their “connection was immediate.” She told People, “It's the most joyful story and time in my life.” People has the story.
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