No, Democrat Bob Casey is not asking to count noncitizen votes. Fact-checking Elon Musk’s X post.

As Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race headed for a recount, the candidates’ campaigns battled over small batches of provisional ballots in counties statewide. 

As of Nov. 19, about 16,400 votes separated Republican Dave McCormick from incumbent Sen. Bob Casey, according to CNN. The Associated Press called the race for McCormick on Nov. 7, but Casey has not conceded. The race is within the 0.5% margin that triggers an automatic recount by state law.

The counties must begin the recount by Nov. 20. Some counties have already started tabulating the 7 million paper ballots that will be recounted. 

X owner Elon Musk, who leveraged his massive wealth this year to campaign for President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, accused Casey of trying to count the votes of noncitizens, who are legally barred from voting. 

"The Democratic Party senate candidate in Pennsylvania is trying to change the outcome of the election by counting NON-CITIZEN votes, which is illegal," Musk wrote Nov. 13 on X. 

This claim lacks evidence. 

The Casey and McCormick campaigns have sparred over the validity of an estimated 60,000 provisional ballots across Pennsylvania’s 67 counties. Provisional ballots are cast when voters’ eligibility to vote is in question — records may show that these people already voted, or are not registered in the correct county, or are not registered to vote at all. 

After the election, county officials verify whether provisional ballots are valid. Ballots deemed valid are included in the final vote count; invalid ballots are thrown out. Campaigns can challenge decisions to accept or reject those ballots. 

This process happens in every election in nearly every state. 

The Casey and McCormick campaigns have disagreed about whether to count provisional ballots. But so far, the citizenship of voters who cast provisional ballots isn’t in question. 

PolitiFact reviewed public ballot hearings in Pennsylvania and examined local reporting on provisional ballot challenges. We found no instances of ballots being rejected because someone wasn’t a citizen, or because Casey’s campaign had asked officials to count known noncitizens’ votes. Local outlets reporting on Musk’s claim called it false.

X’s press team did not respond to our query about Musk’s claim.

McCormick’s campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment. McCormick’s campaign manager, Matt Gruda, has accused Casey’s campaign of trying to count unregistered voters, but neither Gruda nor the campaign has said publicly that noncitizens were voting.

Casey’s campaign has broadly called for election officials to count as many provisional ballots as possible. That includes ballots missing poll workers’ signatures, voter information or secrecy envelopes. 

Featured Fact-check

Facebook posts

stated on November 21, 2024 in Facebook posts

“Taylor Swift has moved to Canada after leaving the U.S. following the big red wave.”

Casey’s campaign also challenged the rejection of batches of ballots in counties in which voters’ names could not be found on the counties’ voter registration lists. The campaign asked officials to recheck the registration lists and said the ballots of voters with pending registrations should be accepted. 

In many cases, the Casey campaign later reviewed those ballots and presented officials with ballots it believed had been mislabeled as coming from people who weren’t registered to vote.

A Casey campaign lawyer, in a letter to Lackawanna County’s solicitor, said ballots should be accepted if the voters who cast them were registered in a different county but moved to and voted in a new county within the last 30 days. The attorney also said voters with pending registration statuses should be allowed to vote if their registration applications were valid, and added that counties should follow federal law when removing voters from voter rolls. 

Gruda, McCormick’s campaign manager, has called these efforts an attempt to count the votes of people who are not registered to vote. He said in a Nov. 13 X post that Casey is "trying to illegally count UNREGISTERED voters as a way to cut into (McCormick’s) margin."

Gruda’s post is in the chain of X posts on which Musk commented, although the campaign did not mention noncitizens. 

Casey’s campaign has denied calling for nonregistered voters’ ballots to be counted, and said it is asking officials not to reject votes from voters who are registered. 

"No one is trying to count votes from individuals who were not registered," Casey campaign lawyer Adam Bonin said. "This is categorically false."

McCormick’s campaign has asked that ballots be rejected if the voters’ names aren’t on voter rolls. County officials have generally voted to throw those ballots out; some have said they will verify the status of voters Democrats identified as being registered. 

In videos of provisional ballot hearings reviewed by PolitiFact, in Philadelphia and Allegheny, Lancaster and Montgomery counties, the issue of noncitizens casting ballots did not come up. And the letter from Casey’s campaign listing the reasons it asked for ballots to be counted did not include any reference to noncitizens. 

James Allen, Delaware County’s elections director, said there was no dispute about noncitizen voters when the county reviewed provisional ballots. 

"We had hundreds and hundreds of challenges but we haven’t had one person say, ‘Ah, look at this, a group of noncitizens,’" Allen said. 

Allen said Musk, and other people who claimed noncitizens are voting, have not provided evidence that noncitizens voted in Pennsylvania. 

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Seth Bluestein, a Republican commissioner in Philadelphia, said he did not see challenges in the city that were based on noncitizen voters. Pittsburgh radio station WESA-FM reported that Lackawanna County Solicitor Donald Frederickson Jr. said noncitizen voters were not an issue in his county, either.

Musk said Casey is "trying to change the outcome of the election by counting NON-CITIZEN votes, which is illegal."

The U.S. Senate candidates in Pennsylvania are dueling over whether provisional ballots in counties across the state are valid. In many cases, Casey’s campaign has challenged the rejection of ballots from voters who were not found on the counties’ voter rolls. 

But Casey’s campaign has not asked for noncitizen votes to be counted. In the county meetings PolitiFact reviewed, noncitizen votes were not at issue. McCormick’s campaign has also not claimed Casey is trying to count noncitizen votes. 

We rate the claim False.