GOP Pennsylvania Senate hopeful David McCormick plans to request a hand recount of some of the ballots in his virtually neck-and-neck race against Trump-endorsed rival Dr. Mehmet Oz, who has a lead of less than 1,000 votes.
McCormick’s campaign told reporters on Tuesday that the candidate will request hand recounts in certain precincts in 12 Pennsylvania counties: Allegheny, Bucks, Centre, Chester, Cumberland, Delaware, Erie, Lancaster, Monroe, Schuylkill, Westmoreland and York counties.
Those counties are “outlier areas” that the McCormick campaign believes have inconsistent data about the number of votes, an unnamed campaign official told NBC News.
“We have, essentially, two different sources of data, one being the counties, two being the Department of State, with completely different results,” the campaign official said.
McCormick’s upcoming request adds to the candidate’s ongoing push for certain ballots to be counted in the race, in which the paper-thin margin triggered an automatic recount that began on Wednesday, per acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman’s (D) order.
The GOP candidate has also been pushing for undated or incorrectly dated mail-in ballots to be counted, putting him at odds with the Republican National Committee – which has made it perfectly clear that no one, not even a Republican, is safe from its (read: ex-president Donald Trump’s) war on mail-in voting.
On Tuesday, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito paused a lower court’s ruling in a Pennsylvania county judicial race that there was “no basis” to “refuse to count undated ballots.” Alito’s pause brings the county judicial race to SCOTUS and could impact the Senate race as the full Supreme Court decides on whether undated ballots ought to be counted.
The RNC did not respond to TPM’s request for comment on Wednesday.
