HARRISBURG (TNS) — With less than 1,000 votes separating leading contenders Mehmet Oz and David McCormick, the immensely expensive, nationally watched Republican U.S. Senate primary in Pennsylvania is headed to a recount.
State officials said Wednesday that the margin of Oz’s lead as it stands now — at 902 votes of more than 1.3 million cast — was within the 0.5% margin triggering a mandatory recount under state law. McCormick, the trailing candidate, had not waived his right to a recount as of Wednesday afternoon, said Leigh Chapman, Acting Secretary of the Commonwealth.
The state will issue the official recount declaration on Thursday, and all county boards of election can begin their recount efforts on Friday. The recount must be completed by noon on June 7 and the results submitted by noon the next day, Chapman said.
Oz has 419,365 votes; McCormick has 418,463, the state said.
But a decent chunk of Republican ballots remains to be counted, officials indicated.
Jonathan Marks, deputy secretary for elections and commissions, said there are around 4,000 mail-in and absentee ballots left to be counted statewide — with most being military and civilian overseas ballots, which were due Tuesday at 5 p.m.
There are 6,000 provisional ballots — cast in-person at polling places — that county elections boards are continuing to adjudicate across the state, Marks added.
No party breakdown of the 10,000 remaining ballots was immediately provided, but a large chunk will undoubtedly be Democratic.
Another 860 Republican ballots — missing handwritten dates on their outer envelopes — are the subject of pending litigation. The state is advising counties to tally them and keep them separated while the courts consider legal challenges.
This recount will be the seventh since 2004, when the legislature passed the automatic recount provision. Three of those were waived by the second-place finisher, according to the state, and in the other three — the Superior Court race in 2009, the Democratic Commonwealth Court primary in 2011 and the Commonwealth Court general last year — the outcomes did not change at the conclusion of the counts.
In a recount, counties are required to tally all their votes again “using a different device than initial tabulation,” Chapman said. That means that if a county used a precinct scanner to tabulate in-person votes, they’d have to now funnel those ballots through a different type of scanner.
“The recount will be conducted transparently as dictated by law,” Chapman said at a Wednesday press conference. “The affected candidates or their attorney representatives are entitled to be present and observe.”
On Wednesday, counties were busy tallying military and civilian overseas ballots. They also continued to adjudicate and process their remaining provisional ballots.
Marks said he expects counties to finish counting these ballots before they start their recount.
(c)2022 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Visit the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at www.post-gazette.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
