US Sen. Bob Casey has not conceded his re-election bid, citing more than 100,000 ballots left to be counted in the state even as the Associated Press has called the race Republican Dave McCormick.

Casey and his Democratic allies have adamantly said they want all ballots counted and have signaled they believe what remains to be counted could still change the balance of the race, which is currently separated by just over 30,000 votes.

Regardless of the AP call, county elections offices still have a lot of work to do in recording results up and down the ballot. Officials are down to the last ballots that need extra work to determine if they will be counted and military and foreign ballots that are given extra time to come back.

This work takes place in every election, and is not affected by media talk or candidate concessions, it will only be subject to extra attention this year because the US Senate remains tight.

How many ballots remain?

In a statement Thursday, Pennsylvania’s secretary of state Al Schmidt said more than 100,000 ballots still need to be assessed in the state. However, some of the remaining ballots will ultimately be rejected.

Scrutiny of state provisional ballots begins Friday.

What types of ballots still need to be counted?

Remaining ballots are generally divided into four categories: provisional ballots, overseas ballots, outstanding ballots and outstanding postal ballots.

Both parties are likely to battle intensely in court, and via challenges to election officials, over the fate of these remaining ballots.

Where does the county stand?

While it’s hard to get a statewide sense of outstanding ballots, here’s what we know from the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh areas:

In Philadelphia, there are about 20,000 provisional ballots left, City Commissioner Seth Bluestein said.

In Allegheny County, home to Pittsburgh, officials posted to X on Thursday that staff had 12,680 provisional ballots to review and that 4,309 ballots had been sent to military and overseas voters.

Bucks County has approximately 5,200 provisional ballots remaining, 2,500 uncounted mail-in ballots and up to 3,000 military ballots, according to a county spokesperson.

Chester County has more than 3,500 provisional ballots and more than 1,800 military and foreign ballots, a county spokesman said.

Neil Makhija, Chairman of Montgomery County electoral board, posted to X last Thursday that his county has 6,500 provisional ballots and about 2,500 overseas and other ballots.

How does AP calling work?

The Associated Press has a long track record of correctly picking winners, even in close elections. These calls carry no legal weight, but they are used by The Inquirer and other outlets to determine winners — as was the case, for example, with President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.

The Associated Press only declares a winner when it is clear that a candidate has won. That decision involved careful analysis of voting data and trends.

“AP’s race calls are not predictions and are not based on speculation. They are declarations based on an analysis of polling results and other election data that a candidate has emerged as the winner and that no other candidate in the race will be able to overtake the winner when all votes have been counted,” AP writes in a guide to its breed appeal.

In an article explaining the reasons for calling McCormick’s victory, the AP explained that there were not enough outstanding votes in precincts that supported Casey and noted that Casey won by significantly smaller margins this year in Philadelphia and Bucks counties compared to his previous winnings. At the time, AP said it estimated 91,000 outstanding votes.

Even when a race is in the margin for a recount, as the Senate race is, the AP will call it if it’s clear a recount would change the outcome.

Will there be a recalculation?

Perhaps.

If the race stays within half a percent, as it is now, Pennsylvania’s secretary of state must call a recount before Thursday’s end. The candidate with fewer votes, at this point Casey, will have until noon Wednesday to ask Schmidt not to call a recount.

Schmidt must provide the candidates with 24 hours notice before calling for a recount so that we know by 17.00 on Wednesday if that occurs.

But if McCormick manages to extend his lead past half a percent by Thursday, a recount will no longer be in order.

When would a recalculation take place?

State law requires a recount to begin no later than the third Wednesday after Election Day — in this case, Nov. 20.

It must be ready by noon on the following Tuesday, which would be November 26.

How does the recalculation work?

Counties can either recount ballots by hand or run ballots through a different type of machine. Most counties choose machine counting because hand counting is a long and tedious process.

Counties must manually recount ballots that the machines can’t process because of problems with how voters marked them — such as discrepant marks on the page or marking in the circle for more than one candidate in a single race.

The recount should be faster than counting on Election Day because counties don’t have to go through the process of opening and collating mail-in ballots.

Will a recount change the results?

Recounts rarely change the outcome of an election, but the number of votes will change by small amounts.

Any changes come largely as a result of how machines read overvotes and undervotes, ballots where machines can read outliers differently. For example, if a voter started filling out a ballot for one candidate and then tried to delete their original vote and filled in for another.

While one machine might flag that vote for human review, another might miss the marks and count the original vote. During the hand counting of the votes, election workers are asked to determine the voter’s intent.