Bob Casey is not giving up the US Senate race. But it’s not like Donald Trump in 2020.

As Pennsylvania’s razor-thin U.S. Senate moves toward a recount, allies of President-elect Donald Trump say Sen. Bob Casey is working to steal the election, drawing false parallels between Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and the decision Casey to stand firm on his re-election bid as votes are counted.

However, there is a fundamental difference between these two scenarios.

Casey, a three-term Democratic incumbent, is using the system’s legal channels to wait out the tabulation of votes and fight to have ballots counted even if things don’t go his way. The Associated Press called the Senate race for Republican Dave McCormick on November 7, concluding that although votes were still being counted, Casey no longer had a viable path to victory.

This is in stark contrast to Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results by attempting to exclude millions of votes cast legally in Pennsylvania. To this day, Trump has not conceded defeat to President Joe Biden four years ago and he was accused of trying to overthrow results.

» READ MORE: As Casey remains in the Senate race, he is pinning his hopes on miniature county-level fights over contested votes

As the recount progressed, Republicans increasingly pointed to decisions by Democrat-led boards of elections to count undated ballots, which the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said twice this year should not be counted in the current election, as evidence of an alleged attempt to fraudulently transfer votes to voters votes in favor of Casey.

While the commissions’ decisions – including those in Philadelphia, Bucks, Montgomery and Center counties – clearly conflict with the state court orders, they are consistent with local officials’ prior position that these ballots should be counted, and the commissions did not clearly link their justification for the bid Casey’s re-election. McCormick’s campaign has filed several lawsuits seeking to overturn those decisions, including Friday’s lawsuit against Philadelphia city commissioners who decided to include more than 600 ballots submitted by voters who did not date the outer envelopes or misdated them, as required by state law

Last week, the right-wing Fair Elections Fund placed a TV ad calling on Casey to resign, using the senator’s own words from 2020 and calling on Trump to do the same after losing to Biden.

However, the current state of the Pennsylvania Senate race bears little resemblance to 2020. Although Casey did not concede, he did not deny the legality of the current election results.

Rather, he argues that every vote in the state should be counted and that those remaining votes could make a difference — even though his chances of winning seem increasingly unlikely.

As the race heads to a recount, Casey trails by more than 20,000 votes, a lead too enormous for a recount to have much chance of changing the outcome of the race.

– Casey isn’t saying the election was stolen, is he? said Matthew Jordan, professor of media and film studies and news literacy expert at Pennsylvania State University. “Casey just says, ‘Be patient.'”

Asked on Thursday if there are enough votes to overtake McCormick in the Senate race, Casey responded: “I don’t know. I just want to make sure we count every vote.

A typical process attracting special attention

In previous elections, when Casey was winning his races handily, the Casey campaign and Democrats commonly appeared before local boards of elections across Pennsylvania, fighting over provisional ballots – which voters cast when the county board of elections must determine whether someone qualifies to vote – to be counted. This process is standard for every election. However, it has gained particular attention as the Senate race remains close.

While the Casey campaign is fighting to count as many ballots as possible, it is up to local boards of elections and courts to decide which ballots to include. Democrats’ arguments focused on the basic issues of whether the law prohibits vote counting.

All ballots in question are legally cast provisional and absentee ballots, but require additional verification to determine whether they meet all criteria for counting.

This is a different situation than in 2020, when the Trump campaign filed dozens of frivolous, evidence-free lawsuits and made sweeping, bombastic claims of voter fraud.

Still, the Republican pressure campaign for Casey to resign is growing. On Friday, both Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley and U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ariz.) sent to votes, McCormick’s election.

There is no evidence that this is true.

Whatley and Cotton’s posts mainly related to decisions made in four Pennsylvania counties to count undated ballots.

Although the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court ruled earlier this year that undated ballots should be counted, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court later blocked that decision, issuing two orders earlier this year that undated ballots should not be counted in this election.

Democrats have long argued that excluding these ballots violates these voters’ constitutional rights. Board members expressed concerns about otherwise validly cast ballots being discarded during voting to be counted. Democrats are voting more by mail, and counting those ballots could disproportionately benefit Casey. However, county officials made no mention of Casey’s re-election bid during the ballot counting process.

Even if additional undated ballots are counted – despite active legal challenges from the RNC – they will not be enough to close the gap between Casey and McCormick.

» READ MORE: Dave McCormick sues Philadelphia election officials over their decision to count undated ballots despite court orders

Still, the commission’s decision was unusual, said Derek Muller, an election law expert at the University of Notre Dame.

“Theoretically, the board should have just excluded the ballots and then allowed the candidate to file a lawsuit,” Muller said. “… They kind of turn the tables and basically force the RNC to do it as a participant in these cases.”

This approach, Muller added, “puts a spotlight on election officials” and could “engage the courts in a way we probably don’t want the courts to step in.”

Impatient ‘fan culture’ pitted against Bob Casey on the Internet

Trump’s baseless rhetoric about 2020 election fraud primed his audience to be receptive to similar messages. Trump began laying similar groundwork on Election Day this month, falsely claiming there was “massive fraud” in Philadelphia before the race later swung in his favor.

Four years ago, Trump and others feverishly and falsely claimed fraud and widespread voter fraud, coining the slogan and hashtag “Stop the Steal.” The words and actions of the then-president and his loyalists culminated in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, as Congress attempted to certify the results of the 2020 election.

In today’s rapidly evolving digital culture, it’s challenging to be patient with election results, as evidenced by voter expectations — “this expectation that anything that isn’t immediate is somehow problematic” — that races will be called quickly, Jordan said.

And as Casey delays stepping down, online users are posting often incorrect information to support their “GOP tribe,” playing an lively role in “fan culture,” Jordan said.

“I think there are people who are fans of the MAGA brand and others who will do anything they can to sell this product, they will do anything they can to sell this worldview,” he said.

Staff writer Jeremy Roebuck contributed to this article.