A Pennsylvania election official is facing backlash after comments she made about disregarding court rulings to count ballots that had been deemed invalid by the courts. Bucks County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia apologized Wednesday, Nov. 20, for saying, “precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country.”
“The passion in my heart got the best of me, and I apologize again for that,” Diane Ellis-Marseglia said during a commissioner’s meeting. “We all make mistakes, and I made a mistake. Because I am an elected official, I am held to a far higher standard than everybody else.”
The comments were made during a public meeting, where the commissioner and another commissioner voted to count about 600 ballots that lacked signatures or dates. These ballots had been ruled invalid by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court before the election.
The decision has sparked strong objections from local Republicans and legal experts, particularly as it comes amid a closely watched recount in Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race, where Republican Dave McCormick narrowly defeated incumbent Democratic Sen. Bob Casey by fewer than 20,000 votes.
While the commissioner apologized for her comments disregarding legal precedent, she defended the decision to count the ballots, arguing that rejecting them would “disenfranchise voters” over what she described as clerical errors.
Bucks County voted to count the invalid ballots despite the state’s highest court ruling against it. However, after a lawsuit from McCormick’s campaign, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered all counties to “abide by its past rulings” and refrain from counting undated and unsigned ballots.
Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, D, weighed in this week, siding with the GOP position, stating, “Any insinuation that our laws can be ignored or do not matter is irresponsible and does damage to faith in our electoral process.”
