DV Journal

Democrat commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia started a firestorm last week that has turned the eyes of the entire country, including U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton and the entire Washington Post Editorial Board, to Bucks County.

In a now-viral moment posted to X by the Bucks County GOP, and shared by the likes of Elon Musk, Commissioner Marseglia motioned to accept ballots in defiance of recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court rulings.

While Bucks is not the only Democrat-led county to ignore the state Supreme Court in seeming attempt to help Democrat Sen. Bob Casey (who previously endorsed Marseglia in her 2023 election) retain his seat, the downright hubris in her comments at the November commissioners’ meeting is the reason for her current notoriety. (It is worth noting that Marseglia’s campaign committee donated to Bob Casey’s campaign this year.)

In her rationale for ignoring the rulings of the Democrat majority Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Marseglia stated, “I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country. 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.”

She did not display this same level of concern for counting all votes in October, when Bucks County turned away voters in line for on-demand mail-in ballots well before the deadline, and was forced to extend the on-demand mail-in ballot deadline by a Bucks County judge.

Her tenure as both commissioner and member of the board of elections was marred by additional lies in October, when reports of individuals with seemingly official election lanyards, that were not county employees, was brought up in a commissioners’ meeting in October. Marseglia immediately pointed the finger at Republicans, stating “they weren’t from the Democratic Party,” and alleging they were Republicans, absent any evidence.

As it turned out, the badges seemed to have the words “paid for by the Pennsylvania Democratic Party,” directly printed on them. Marseglia was wrong again, and faced no repercussions.

Marseglia’s open disrespect of  the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s authority to rule on election laws is a stain on election integrity for Bucks County. Nobody is above the law, including Commissioner Marseglia.

How can Bucks County voters have any trust in their elections when their commissioner, who is also a member of the board of elections, openly ignores the rule of law that exists to protect the integrity of our elections?

Marseglia’s carelessness has made Bucks County the epicenter of election denial. For her part, she should resign and apologize to the people of Bucks County.

Commonwealth Court President Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer listened to hours of arguments Tuesday on a petition brought by the David McCormick Senate campaign to permit mail-in and absentee ballots without a voter-written date on the envelope to count.

Jubelirer did not issue a ruling but promised that she would rule soon, although it’s likely the Supreme Court will have the last word.

McCormick, a hedge fund CEO, and Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity heart surgeon, are in a razor-thin Republican primary election contest with fewer than 1,000 votes separating them. However, Oz has already declared himself the presumptive nominee who will face Democrat John Fetterman in the fall.

The close race automatically triggered a statewide recount that is underway and must be completed by June 8.

Meanwhile, a senior McCormick campaign staffer said the campaign would request a hand recount for 12 counties: Allegheny, York, Centre, Chester, Cumberland, Erie, Lancaster, Monroe, Schuylkill, Delaware, Bucks, and Westmoreland.

Those counties are “outliers” with undervotes and overvotes that “fall outside the norm.” Ballotpedia defines undervotes as “when the number of choices selected by a voter in an election is less than the maximum number allowed for that election.” Overvotes are when voters cast more votes in a contest than is allowed.

“We’re going to understand with a hand-recount where any abnormalities exist,” he said. “And actually have a receipt that we can trust and verify, that I can take to my client and say, ‘These are the results.’”

They want to run hand-recount to run concurrently with the state-required recount.

“We want Republican primary voters to know they have a winner, whether it’s by one vote or a 1,000 votes, so we can all get behind the nominee and beat Fetterman in the fall,” McCormick said. “It’s just transparency. There’s an enormous lack of it.”

“We dropped from 33,000 absentee ballots outstanding to 17,000 overnight,” he said. “And there were only 1,100 votes added to the Department of State website. We’ve gone day after day after day with no reconciliation between the vote count and the vote tally.”

“And obviously, we’re winning absentees by a very big margin,” he added.

In the courtroom, McCormick’s lawyers Ron Hicks and Charles Cooper argued a federal court ruling permitting undated ballots to be counted trumps state law that requires it. However, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito issued a stay late Tuesday afternoon on that 3rd Circuit opinion, likely throwing a wrench into McCormick’s arguments.

Hicks noted Lehigh and Sullivan Counties had already included those ballots in their totals. As of Tuesday morning, 819 undated ballots were discovered, but he believes there will be more.

“These ballots matter,” Hicks said. “Clearly, this is sufficient basis for equitable relief.”

“All citizens should be allowed to vote in all elections,” said Cooper. The lack of dates on the ballots is “immaterial,” he said.

Pennsylvania Chief Deputy Attorney General Michael Fisher agreed with the McCormick camp.

However, John Gore, a lawyer representing Oz, said McCormick’s lawyers had not made their case. And even if more ballots were found, it was “not possible to overtake Dr. Oz” since some of those ballots would be for Oz and he starts with a lead of more than 900 votes.

The Republican Party is siding with Oz.

Dr. Mehmet Oz

“The law in Pennsylvania is quite clear. These undated ballots should not be counted,” said attorney Thomas King III, arguing on behalf of the Republican National Committee and the state GOP.  He said the state legislature had set the undated ballot policy and it should be upheld. To rule otherwise, the court would be taking power from the legislature, which would be “not only wrong but foolhardy.”

In his rebuttal, Cooper called his adversary’s arguments “meritless.”

As for harm to his client, “we don’t know what the gap is” since not all the votes were counted yet. He asked the court “at a minimum” to order the counties to comply with the order from the secretary of state to sequester the undated ballots. “We think it’s clear right now. It may well make a difference. These votes should be counted as a matter of law.”

Cooper asked the judge “to not disenfranchise voters.”

“The object of the election code is to allow good Pennsylvanians to vote in elections,” he said.

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