The two Pennsylvania county commissioners who openly defied state law last week to count invalid mail-in ballots have campaigned heavily on behalf of Sen. Bob Casey, and touted the "critical role" they played in helping the Democrat win his last Senate campaign.
Bucks County commissioner Bob Harvie attended a rally in August against Republican Dave McCormick, where he stood with activists carrying signs that called McCormick "weird" and falsely claimed he "made money on fentanyl." Harvie and his fellow Democrat Diane Ellis-Marseglia have donated $2,600 to Casey’s campaign this year, according to campaign finance records. Harvie and Marseglia are the duo behind Bucks United, a "well-planned coordinated campaign" that aims to elect Democrats "up and down the ballot" in the Keystone State. According to the Bucks United website, the group’s efforts "yielded the first county wide victories for Democrats in modern history" in 2017, and "set the stage for … Bob Casey’s 2018 statewide victor[y]."
The commissioners are helping Casey’s longshot reelection fight in other ways, this time by openly breaking state law to count invalid mail-in ballots that are likely to favor the three-term incumbent. Harvie and Marseglia voted last week to count ballots that lacked proper signatures, breaking with the commission’s lone Republican member. "The law needs to be changed," said Harvie, a high school social studies teacher. Marseglia, a former adjunct criminal justice professor, said at a commission meeting last Thursday that she would openly defy state law because "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," said Marseglia, suggesting she wants the majority-Democrat Pennsylvania Supreme Court to review the ballots.
The Democrats’ protest vote means 405 invalid absentee ballots will be counted for now. They’re likely to lean heavily towards Casey as mail-in voters tend to lean Democratic. While McCormick leads Casey by roughly 17,000 votes, Republicans are worried that Democrats will use legal maneuvers to count enough invalid ballots to change the outcome of the election.
It could open the commissioners up to legal jeopardy, and raise questions for Casey, who campaigned for Harvie and Marseglia in a heated race last year.
"They will go to jail. Count on it," said Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita. "This is metastasizing into a RICO scheme," said Steven Law, the president of the Senate Leadership Fund, which backed McCormick in the campaign.
In a twist, Harvie and Marseglia ran for reelection last year on a platform of maintaining the integrity of elections in Bucks County, the largest swing county in battleground Pennsylvania.
"This November, control of the elections process in PA’s largest swing county will either fall in the hands of an election denier or stay under common sense leadership," the Marseglia and Harvie campaigns said in a joint statement last year. "Bucks County will determine who is elected President in 2024."
"County commissioners control how you vote," Harvie told a group of Democrats earlier this year, according to Politico.
Casey attended a private fundraiser for Harvie and Marseglia days before last year’s election, and cheered their victory as a "reject[ion] of extremism at the ballot box."