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With a small margin splitting the Republican Senate Republican primary in the Pennsylvania, the race is almost certain to be recounted – and also in court, after candidate David McCormick’s latest push to ensure mail-free ballots manuscript dates will not be discarded.
In a lawsuit filed Monday, McCormick said Pennsylvania County Electoral Councils “kept voters in the dark” for refusing to count those absent and mailed ballots, something he considered a violation of voting rights protections. under the Federal Civil Rights Act and the Pennsylvania Constitution.
McCormick is locked in a race that is too close to call, lagging behind the famous doctor Mehmet Oz by less than 0.1 percent – or about 987 votes, according to The Washington Post’s main election monitoring tool. Under US law, a difference of 0.5 percent or less would trigger an automatic census.
“These ballots were undoubtedly submitted on time – they were stamped with the date of receipt – and were not alleged fraud or irregularity,” the lawsuit said.
The Pennsylvania Republican Senate race is likely to focus on the recount
Pennsylvania law requires absent or mailed voters to return their ballots by 8 pm on election day in a sealed envelope, which is placed in a second envelope to be “filled in, dated, and signed.” The outer envelope then bears a postmark from the post office and a time stamp outlining when the counties received it.
The constitutionality of the date provision was called into question last year in district elections. A three-judge panel ruled on Friday that such a requirement was “insignificant” and thus, if used to reject a vote, violated the Civil Rights Act. He also ordered district election officials to count hundreds of ballots without handwritten dates, as long as they were received on time and “there are no allegations of fraud or irregularity.”
The decision became the basis for a complaint filed by McCormick.
“Every primary vote of Republicans must be counted, including the votes of Pennsylvania servicemen who risk their lives to defend our constitutional right to vote,” campaign spokesman Jess Szymanski told The Washington Post.
It is unclear how many ballots are missing handwritten dates in the race for seven candidates to replace Senator Patrick J. Tumi (R), who is retiring this year. Counties are still counting votes – such as military and overseas ballots – that may continue to arrive this week and are valid as long as they are stamped by the May 17 election deadline.
McCormick, a former hedge fund chief executive and military veteran, opposed Oz, who is backed by former President Donald Trump.
But McCormick can get closer to Oz if the ballots are counted without handwritten dates. While Oz is better at personal voting, mail ballots are slightly in favor of McCormick, who received 32 percent of the state’s mail votes against 23 percent of Oz, according to the Pennsylvania State Department.
Oz’s campaign, meanwhile, flatly rejected McCormick’s proposal to count what Oz considered “legally rejected ballots” in a statement highlighting Republicans’ growing disapproval of postal voting.
“Unfortunately, McCormick’s legal team is following the Democrats’ book, a tactic that could have long-term consequences for the British Commonwealth of Pennsylvania election,” Oz campaign manager Casey Contress wrote on Saturday. “This is a clear contrast to Dr. Mehmet Oz’s efforts to ensure the democratic process in America.”
As Trump falsely attacks other elections, Pennsylvania officials intervene for November
The approval of the postal vote has become deeply partisan – especially after Trump’s repeated false attacks on the voting method. According to a 2021 Pew Research Center survey, 38% of Republicans said they were in favor of allowing all voters to vote early or absent; 84 percent of Democrats said the same.
In a statement posted on Twitter, the Republican Party of Pennsylvania said it would “absolutely object” to counting unsolicited ballot papers in the hotly contested race, a statement echoed by Trump when he called on Oz to declare himself the winner.
That would make it “much harder for them to cheat with the ballots they” just accidentally discovered, “Trump wrote in Truth Social in a post imitating his 2020 attempts to stop counting ballots in the Pennsylvania mail.
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