Daily News | Pennsylvania court orders counting of undated mail ballots in win for McCormick in his GOP Senate race against Oz
A state appellate court on Thursday agreed with Pennsylvania GOP Senate candidate David McCormick and ordered Pennsylvania counties to tally more than 800 undated mail ballots and include them in the vote totals they report for the neck-and-neck Republican primary race between McCormick and Mehmet Oz.
Her ruling came as a result of a lawsuit filed by McCormick as he sought to have those ballots counted. His race against Oz is undergoing a mandatory recount in which he trails by fewer than 1,000 votes. Some counties had already done exactly what Cohn Jubelirer prescribed. That’s what the state had requested last week. But counties run elections, and some disagreed with the state and had refused to open the undated ballots and include them in the results.
For instance, McCormick lawyer Ronald L. Hicks Jr. noted, some counties were counting ballots with the wrong date — such as the voter’s date of birth — and only rejecting those that had no date at all. Oz’s campaign, however, had urged Cohn Jubelirer not to upset the status quo. Noting that the state legislature had set the requirement and state courts — including the Commonwealth Court — had previously ruled to uphold it in prior election years.