Recount Officially Declared In Oz Vs. McCormick PA GOP Senate Race
Source: Patch (PA)
PENNSYLVANIA — A recount has been officially announced by the Pennsylvania Department of State in the deadlocked Republican primary for U.S. Senate, with only a tiny margin separating celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz and former George W. Bush administration official David McCormick. The announcement comes a day after McCormick's campaign filed a lawsuit in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in an effort to mandate the counting of undated ballots.
The effort has been staunchly opposed by President Donald Trump, who endorsed Oz, and the Republican National Committee, which claims that McCormick is using a Democratic tactic that would compromise election integrity. The recount is expected to take weeks. The move has been long expected, as recounts are typically automatically triggered if the margin between two candidates is less than 0.5 percent. The margin between Oz and McCormick is just 902 votes, according to the latest unofficial returns. Oz maintains a very narrow lead of 419,365 to 418,463.
McCormick's campaign issued a statement saying they were proud of the results thus far, noting the "razor thin" difference and supporing the recount."This narrow difference triggers an automatic recount," McCormick said. "And we look forward to a swift resolution so the party can unite to defeat socialist John Fetterman in the fall." Oz has not yet issued a public statement on the recount being officially confirmed, although Trump has urged Oz to "declare victory" and has cast the same baseless aspersions on the 2022 primary election process as he did on the 2020 election.
The Department of State estimates the recount will cost about $1 miillino in taxpayer funding. It's the seventh recount that has ever been triggered in Pennsylvania history. Only three of those recounts were actually carried out, as the others were waived by the second place finisher. In all three recounts, the initial results of the election stood. Counties can begin recount process on Friday, but must begin no later than June 1. The deadline for the recount to be completed in June 7, and results must be submitted to the Department of State by noon on June 8.
Read more: https://patch.com/pennsylvania/across-pa/recount-officially-declared-oz-vs-mccormick-pa-gop-senate-race
Just heard this on the radio where today, the PA SOS officially "declared" that a recount will occur (and the radio report said they can "start tomorrow", but have to get it all done by June 8).
Meanwhile some of the counties (like the city of Philly) are still counting some provisional ballots -
There are about 6,000 provisional ballots left to be counted, state elections officials said Wednesday, making it the largest category of uncounted votes. Provisional ballots are last-chance paper ballots that anyone can use if they show up to a polling place and have some problem voting. Mandated by federal law, they’re designed to prevent voters from being disenfranchised — no matter the problem you can always use a provisional ballot.
Provisional ballots have traditionally been a small percentage of the vote, used only in situations such as someone not being listed in the poll books, or having their eligibility challenged by a poll watcher.
Since 2020, though, the boom in mail voting has led to a surge in the number of provisional ballots. Voters who request mail ballots — in some cases, they may have forgotten they did so — and show up to the polls have to cast provisional ballots. That also includes voters who request mail ballots and never receive them, or who lose or destroy them.
Provisional ballots are the last to be counted, because elections officials have to research each one to determine the eligibility of the vote. For example, they have to first count all the mail ballots to know whether one of the provisional voters actually did end up already voting by mail. That means provisional ballots are not only the last, they’re the slowest to painstakingly research and count.
https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/live/pa-republican-senate-primary-recount-mehmet-oz-david-mccormick-20220525.html#card-672474882
There may be some overseas ballots too since they had a later date for receipt.
Also the City Commissioners here voted to now count the ballots that they had set aside that were missing the dates -
Philadelphia elections officials voted Wednesday to count more than 2,000 undated mail ballots, over objections from an attorney for GOP Senate primary candidate Mehmet Oz. City Commissioner Lisa Deeley, part of the three-member board that oversees city elections, noted that the ballots — which were missing the required handwritten date on their outer envelope — had been received on time and bore no indication of fraud. She cited a recent federal appellate court ruling that found the state’s dating requirement irrelevant to whether the vote was legally cast.
With that vote, Philadelphia, the state’s largest county, became the latest to count a class of contested ballots that are at the center of ongoing legal wrangling by Oz and his primary opponent David McCormick. Several state courts, including the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in a 2020 ruling, have found that the law is clear and undated ballots are invalid. But last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that the state’s dating requirement was irrelevant to determining whether a vote was legally cast.
That court has so far offered no guidance on how widely its ruling, which was focused on the 2021 general election in Lehigh County, should apply. And state and county election officials have been left scrambling to figure out whether they should include undated mail ballots in their tallies from last week’s primary. For McCormick, who trails Oz by fewer than 1,000 votes, the issue could become key. He has generally outperformed his opponent in mail voting and has sued asking the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court to require all counties to include undated ballots in their official tallies.
On Wednesday, Paul Rossi, an attorney for Oz’s campaign, urged Deeley and Philadelphia’s other two commissioners, Seth Bluestein and Omar Sabir, to reject the contested votes. “I understand the sense of fluidity at the moment in state law,” he said. “But as of now, the state Supreme Court has said …these ballots should not be counted.” By voting to accept them, Philadelphia joins several other counties which have taken similar votes in recent days in line with guidance from state officials to count the undated ballots but keep them separate from their overall vote tallies, pending further court guidance.
https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/live/pa-republican-senate-primary-recount-mehmet-oz-david-mccormick-20220525.html#card-1631797179
= new reply since forum marked as read
Ensure that it is done with integrity. Put Ginni Thomas in charge.
. . . . . . .
the analysts have noted that McCormick has received more mail votes in comparison to Oz and assuming that all counties start including the ballots without handwritten dates that were set aside, it's possible the vote differential may narrow (although some of the red counties are balking).
Here are the state-wide total results (highlighting Senate votes as a snapshot at ca. post time) - https://www.electionreturns.pa.gov/Home/SummaryResults?ElectionID=94&ElectionType=P&IsActive=1
BUT from what I posted in the OP comments, the fact that there were ~6000 provisional ballots still being processed here in Philly (although they may have worked through more of those since the article came out), then it's possible the difference between them may narrow. Those get generated when people do in-person voting and either aren't confirmed in the poll book or who may have never received a mail-ballot in time or mailed it late and it wasn't registered, or messed up and had to "spoil" their mail ballot due to an error or other circumstance (dog ate it 
) and get that officially noted in order to vote again without the vote being a dupe).
This was Philly's latest count as of last night and what is interesting is that there were more GOP votes for the Senate race than the Governor race in general) - https://results.philadelphiavotes.com/ResultsSW.aspx?type=STW&map=CTY
