Good morning and welcome to Broad + Liberty's Weekly Reads.

Subscribe to our daily email list and get the best of Broad + Liberty delivered straight to your inbox.

1. Guy Ciarrocchi: Democrats’ election-denial in Pennsylvania is the opening salvo of the 2026 campaign

By Guy Ciarrocchi
 

Tragically, Bob Casey’s career will be remembered as that of just another Democrat partisan politician so addicted to power and blindly loyal to his party that he destroyed his “moderate, bipartisan” veil. He’s been a candidate since 1994. He knows that he can not win. Yet, he continues to allow himself to serve as a pawn for his party.

Conservatives must realize what’s really happening in this protracted count and the likely “re-count.” It’s not about Bob Casey. Both Casey and the folks pulling the strings know Dave McCormick won. 

This is actually a battle about the future — making it easier to ballot-harvest and to “bend the rules” or cheat in elections yet to come.

Why It Matters. Democratic activists are pressuring county commissioners and are now pressuring judges to ignore the courts and the clearly written laws of Pennsylvania. They’re working to get any change, any “loosening” of the law. Not to advance Casey’s election; he’s lost and everyone involved knows it. It’s to help Democrat ballot-harvesters in 2026.

More shocking than partisan, hack-attorneys making these arguments is that some Democratic county commissioners are counting these ballots, rejecting their own attorneys’ counsel. The most infamous is the Chair of the Bucks County Commissioners, Diane Marseglia. During a live broadcast hearing, she admitted that the courts had ruled that the ballots are invalid, but she was going to defy the law and vote to approve them anyway. 

This is brazen election interference — and election denial — and lawbreaking all at once. Thankfully, the courts have ruled to disallow the illicit ballots in the official count.

Don’t be fooled when “regular guy” Senator John Fetterman says: what’s the big deal, “it’s only 155 ballots” in Bucks County. (He’s admitting that Casey lost. It’s as if he’s saying, “C’mon, it’s just a few ballots. Who cares?”) Fetterman knows this is about 2026.

Continue Reading

2. Outraged Bucks residents want Ellis-Marseglia and Harvie gone

By Bradley Vasoli
 

Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey’s struggle to remain in office, and two Bucks County Commissioners’ effort to help him by counting improper votes, are kaput. But nearly 100 area residents flooded into the county courthouse Wednesday to herald a new, related battle to get Democrats Diane Ellis-Marseglia and Bob Harvie off the county’s Board of Commissioners.

Many urged the two to resign but, failing that, would like to see them impeached, prosecuted, or, three years hence, electorally defeated. The commissioners’ adversaries say Ellis-Marseglia and Harvie acted lawlessly in an attempt to count hundreds of disallowed ballots. 

In fact, on November 12, Ellis-Marseglia said the same herself. 

“We all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country and people violate laws any time they want,” she said. “So for me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention to it. There is nothing more important than counting votes.”

Why It Matters. Jamie Cohen Walker, a Central Bucks School District mother who has fought the county in court for transparency on Bucks’s restrictive 2020 Covid-related health guidance, said Ellis-Marseglia’s behavior typifies her tendency to be opaque and heavy-handed.

“She doesn’t want people to read her words,” Walker said. “So when Commissioner Marseglia says the precedent of the court ‘doesn’t matter anymore in this county [sic]’ and “people violate laws any time they want,” she is speaking about herself and her own action. And she will do this again if she is given the opportunity to.” 

Several other orators urged Ellis-Marseglia and Harvie to resign, while activist Skip Salvesen professed a desire to impeach the officials, something that can only be done by the Pennsylvania General Assembly. Insofar as Democrats control the state House of Representatives, such a project would have no practical chance of succeeding.

Quotable. “This is a travesty that we have to be here today to make sure that the law is followed,” Bucks County Republican Committee Chair Pat Poprik lamented. 

Continue Reading

3. Lightning Round

• Activists’ ballot-application challenges fall apart

• Thom Nickels: First-world diets

• Beth Ann Rosica: January 6 graphic novel sent to some local school districts, with more on the way

• Low-achieving Pennsylvania schools failing to tell parents about school choice funds

• Paul Davis: Drug addicts are more to be pitied than censured

• Three school districts forced to file suit against the Pennsylvania School Boards Association

4. PA Pollsters' 2024 Recap

5. What we're reading

The election post-mortems continue to roll in, and this one from Noah Rothman at National Review is worth reading. How did the Democrats blow it? “It wasn’t one thing,” Rothman says, “it was everything.” Ignoring economists’ warnings about inflation, baffling foreign policy choices, and a dangerous misreading of the 2022 midterm results were some — but not all — of the reasons the incumbent party fumbled away a race that they could have had a decent chance of winning. “So, what was it that did the Democrats in? Everything. All of it.” A depressing read if you’re a Harris fan, delightful if you’re not, and informative either way.