Pennsylvania secretary of state will not order a recount

Pennsylvania’s top elections official confirmed Friday she will not be ordering a recount or recanvass of her state’s election results as Republicans rail against officials there over groundless voter fraud claims.

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar (D) said the races for president, state attorney general, auditor general and state treasurer will not face recounts or recanvasses after unofficial returns submitted by the state’s counties showed no statewide candidate lost by less 0.5 percent, the margin at which such recourses would be triggered. 

“We are extremely grateful to all 67 counties who have been working overtime and putting in an extraordinary effort to count every vote, with so far more than 6.8 million votes having been counted,” Boockvar said in a statement. “The counties continue to adjudicate and count the approximately 100,000 provisional ballots issued to voters at the polls on Election Day, as well as the more than 28,000 military and overseas ballots that were cast in this election.”

With ballots still being cast, Biden currently holds a nearly 60,000-vote lead in the state, a margin that has mushroomed since the state was called for him last weekend and could grow more.

The Pennsylvania Department of State said in a press release that 40,000 provisional ballots cast “have been counted or partially counted” and that that figure “will continue to climb over the next few days.”

The Trump campaign and Republicans have launched a fusillade of lawsuits in the Keystone State in an attempt to reverse President-elect Joe Biden’s victory there.

Republicans’ main argument in Pennsylvania centers around the fact that state law allows the counting of mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day and received by 5:00 p.m. last Friday. The Department of State said about 10,000 mail ballots that were cast on or before Nov. 3 were received between 8 p.m. Nov. 3 and 5 p.m. Nov. 6, a total that is not large enough to impact the decision to not hold recounts or recanvasses in any of the races.

The Trump campaign is waging lawsuits in a number of other swing states as well.

With every state now called in the presidential race, Biden defeated Trump with 306 electoral votes to 232, meaning Biden would still have more than the 270 electoral votes he needs to win the White House without Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes. The president-elect successfully flipped Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.