Democrats have declared victory in the race for Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district, but Republican nominee Rick Saccone has not conceded – and Republicans have taken some tentative steps toward seeking a recount.
On Wednesday, attorneys for Saccone asked for “immediate injunctive relief” in federal court after a campaign lawyer was not allowed to observe the count of ballots in Allegheny County, where Democratic nominee Conor Lamb won massively. They sent letters to election offices in Allegheny and the district’s other counties requesting that ballots and voting machines be preserved, a step often taken before seeking a recount or challenge.
“‘We are waiting for provisional ballots to be counted,” said Jesse Hunt, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “We are not ruling out a recount.”
Pennsylvania’s postgame drama is one of several roiling the state’s politics, just days before candidates file in the new districts created by a court ruling that struck down a Republican-drawn map. The state’s Republican majority is also waiting for the Supreme Court and a three-judge panel on a lower court to rule on their challenges to the new map, which was drawn by Pennsylvania judges who had been elected as Democrats.
The winner in the 18th district may not be certified until those other challenges end. According to Wanda Murren, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of State, the state will not certify the election until March 26 at the earliest, after all military, overseas, and provisional ballots are counted. The new congressman from the 18th district will have little to do until the second week of April, after the House of Representatives returns from its Easter recess.
There is no automatic recount provision for federal elections in Pennsylvania, and any new request to count votes would have to be paid for by Republicans. A party must first gather signatures to request a recount; Murren said that Republicans had not yet pulled petitions for that process. Their first move, asking to “impound” the machines, might not lead to a recount at all.
“It’s no different than the usual post election procedure, when these machines are locked away,” said Murren. “It sounds really good to say ‘we’ll have those machines impounded,’ but it’s pretty ordinary.”
Since Wednesday morning, when Lamb edged ahead of Saccone by 627 votes, multiple news outlets – though not the Associated Press – have declared him the winner. Less than 500 military, overseas, and provisional ballots are left to be counted, leaving Saccone with no path to victory unless there was a substantial human error in the unofficial vote count.
Such human errors have happened before. In 2011, a Democratic candidate for Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court ended election night with a lead, and declared victory. The next day, the election clerk in conservative Waukesha County announced that 14,000 votes had been tabulated incorrectly, and that the Republican had won.
Errors of that size are exceedingly rare; the Waukesha County error ended up casting the clerk her job. In 2005, Virginia’s race for attorney general ended with Republican nominee Robert McDonnell ahead of Democratic nominee Creigh Deeds by just 323 out of nearly 2 million total votes, a margin of 0.017 percent. Deeds paid for a recount, which ended up finding 37 new votes for McDonnell and confirming his victory.
Lamb leads Saccone by 0.27 percent of the vote.
Democrats are confident that Lamb won the election, and are more focused on what might happen in the Republican challenges to the district maps. Both Lamb and Saccone must submit at least 1,000 signatures to run in new districts by the end of business on March 20. Lamb’s campaign said it could get those signatures quickly; Saccone’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
On Thursday, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi kicked off her weekly news conference by congratulating Lamb, but hinting at the Republican recount threat.
“We’re very excited about welcoming a new member to the caucus,” said Pelosi. “Hopefully that will be very soon.”