Pennsylvania secretary of state says she won't order recount
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Election workers count ballots at the Philadelphia Convention Center. Photo: Chris McGrath/Getty Images
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said on Friday that based on unofficial returns, she will not order a recount or recanvass of ballots cast in the 2020 election, including in the presidential race.
Why it matters: President Trump, who has not publicly conceded to President-elect Joe Biden, continues to litigate election results, including in Pennsylvania.
- Biden won Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes, AP projected on Nov. 7, pushing him over the 270 electoral vote threshold needed to win the presidency.
What they're saying: "Based on the unofficial returns submitted by all the counties to the Department of State, Secretary Boockvar has determined that she will not be ordering a recount and recanvass of the election returns in the counties, as no statewide candidate was defeated by one-half of one percent or less of the votes cast," Pennsylvania's Department of State said in a release.
- "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," Boockvar added.
- As of Friday midday, 40,000 of the provisional ballots cast had been counted or partially counted, the department said.
- The department added that about 10,000 mail ballots cast on or before Nov. 3 were received by counties between 8 p.m. Nov. 3 and 5 p.m. Nov. 6. "These ballots are not of a sufficient number to impact the no-recount determination of any of the statewide races," the department said.
Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh told Axios that the campaign's "litigation has not run its course in Pennsylvania and we have high confidence in it on Constitutional grounds."
- On Friday, the campaign abandoned its lawsuit in Arizona, another tacit acknowledgment that its attempt to flip states from Biden to Trump utilizing legal methods is unlikely to be effective.
