Pennsylvania held its primary on May 17, and certain contests were highly watched. One in particular is the Republican Senate primary with Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick. Over a week after the primary, no clear winner has been declared. The margin of votes between the two candidates is only 902 with Dr. Oz in the lead. Pennsylvania law requires that an election go through a recount process “when candidates are within half a percentage point of each other.”
The Acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman announced the recount on Wednesday, and the public understands that this process could take more than a week to complete.
Dave McCormick said of the impending recount: “We are proud our campaign received nearly 418,000 votes, won 37 of 67 counties, and contributed to a historic turnout with a razor-thin difference between myself and Mehmet Oz.”
The winner of the Republican Senate nomination will face John Fetterman in November. Fetterman, considered a progressive candidate, suffered a stroke just days before the May 17 primary. He also underwent surgery to implant a pacemaker the day of the primary. Fetterman won his party’s nomination handily.
When the votes were tallied initially (not including mail-in ballots), Dr. Oz held a very narrow lead over McCormick (31.3 percent to 31.1 percent). There was a discrepancy over how mail-in ballots should be handled. McCormick filed a lawsuit “to ensure that mail-in ballot votes lacking a handwritten date would be counted. However, both the Republican Party in Pennsylvania and the Republican National Convention intervened. In a statement from RNC Chief Counsel Matt Raymer, the organization said they only stepped in so that “election laws (would be) followed . . . changing the rules when ballots are already being counted harms the integrity of our elections.”
Raymer added that Pennsylvania law states that undated absentee ballots may not be counted. Election integrity is of the highest concern of Republicans after multiple allegations of voter fraud during the 2020 election cycle.
McCormick’s lawsuit was related to a May 20 federal court ruling – made three days after the Pennsylvania primary – that undated mail-in ballots could be counted was contested by the Republican National Convention and the Pennsylvania GOP, but McCormick’s attorneys argued that handwritten dates are irrelevant “because county boards stamp such ballots with a date on receipt.”
The chief legal counsel for the McCormick campaign, Chuck Cooper, told Fox News Digital that both the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and a federal Court of Appeals have upheld the idea that mail-in ballots could not be qualified simply because the voter failed to hand-write a date on the exterior of the envelope as instructed. Cooper added that the voter’s handwritten date, if provided, “is meaningless.”
The Mehmet Oz campaign has yet to make a statement on the recount.
