HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Republicans went to court Thursday in Pennsylvania as votes are counted in the U.S. Senate election between Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and Republican David McCormick, as the campaigns prepare for a recount and to pressure the provinces for favorable vote counting decisions.
The lawsuits ask courts not to allow counties to count ballots where the voter did not write a date on the return envelope or wrote an incorrect date. The two Republican lawsuits could be among many before the final ballot in the Senate race is counted, especially as the battle heads toward a state-mandated recount.
The Associated Press called the race for McCormick last week, concluding that there were not enough ballots left to count in the areas Casey was winning to put him in the lead.
As of Thursday, McCormick led by about 26,000 votes out of more than 6.9 million ballots counted — within the 0.5% margin threshold to trigger an automatic statewide recount under Pennsylvania law.
The national and state Republican parties have asked the state Supreme Court to block counties from counting the ballots, saying the decisions violate both the court’s recent orders and its precedent in enforcing the requirement in state law .
In a statement, Pennsylvania Republican Party Chairman Lawrence Tabas said: “What is happening in these counties is absolute lawlessness.”
Democratic-majority boards of elections in Philadelphia, Bucks County and Center County voted to count the ballots, the lawsuit said. Democrats cast more ballots than Republicans, and Democrats have in the past supported counting ballots that stumble over what they see as pointless administrative requirements in state law.
“We will be sued anyway. I would rather be on the side of counting the ballots than not counting them,” Bucks County Commissioner Robert Harvie, a Democrat, said before Tuesday’s vote on counting ballots.
Meanwhile, McCormick’s campaign and the state and national Republican Parties have filed a lawsuit in Bucks County District Court challenging the county elections board’s decision to count 405 such ballots.
It’s the opposite of the position McCormick took in court in 2022 in his failed attempt to close the vote gap with famed heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz in the Republican primary for the US Senate in Pennsylvania.
Lower courts have repeatedly found it unconstitutional or illegal to throw out such ballots. But higher courts — including the state Supreme Court, most recently on Nov. 1 — have blocked those decisions.
Counties, meanwhile, continued processing tens of thousands of provisional ballots Thursday and hearing challenges against some of them from attorneys for Casey, McCormick and the state parties. A provisional ballot is typically cast at a polling place on Election Day and is separated from regular ballots in cases where election workers need more time to determine a voter’s eligibility to vote.
On Wednesday, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro’s top election official, Republican Secretary of State Al Schmidt, announced that preliminary results had triggered a legally mandated statewide recount.
Counties must complete the recount by noon on November 26. It largely involves passing paper ballots through high-speed scanners, a process that former election officials say could not change the outcome by more than a few hundred votes.
Meanwhile, both Casey and McCormick were in Washington this week. Casey attended official Senate sessions and cast votes, while McCormick attended Senate orientation and caucus meetings to elect a new leader after Republicans won control of the U.S. Senate in last week’s election, which saw Donald Trump the White House won.
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