The GOP really needs Pennsylvania Republican Senate hopeful David McCormick, who’s currently locked in a near dead heat with Trump-backed rival Dr. Mehmet Oz, to knock it off with the whole “count the mail-in ballots” thing and just stick to the damn script, please.
McCormick filed a lawsuit late Monday demanding that all the state’s county boards of elections include undated mail-in ballots in their vote tallies of the race, which is likely headed toward an automatic recount as Oz’s already razor-thin lead continues to shrink. The lawsuit followed a federal appeals court ruling last week that found that the state must count undated ballots from recent elections — including the May primaries.
But the Republican National Committee and Pennsylvania Republican Party aren’t having it: The New York Times reports that they plan on intervening in an attempt to block McCormick’s bid.
The irony of the Republican hopeful’s lawsuit is blinding: It directly cites voter disenfranchisement as its argument against discounting undated ballots.
“The Boards’ refusal to count ballots due solely to the lack of a handwritten date on the exterior mailing envelope — a technical requirement that a plurality of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has already deemed not mandatory — disenfranchises registered voters of both political parties who chose to exercise their right under Commonwealth law to vote absentee or by mail, in violation of the Free Elections provision of the Commonwealth Constitution,” the lawsuit argued.
The Pennsylvania GOP put out a statement on Monday night vehemently denouncing the candidate’s lawsuit, saying “we absolutely object to the counting of undated mail-in ballots.”
The party also warned McCormick to stop muddying the election fraud narrative that Republicans have been working tirelessly to manufacture.
“We have worked hard towards restoring confidence in our elections, and we call upon everyone to respect, uphold and follow the clear law on this issue,” the Pennsylvania GOP said.
Oz campaign manager Casey Contres even accused McCormick of “following the Democrats’ playbook, a tactic that could have long-term harmful consequences for elections in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”
The RNC and Pennsylvania GOP’s attack on McCormick’s lawsuit came after ex-president Donald Trump made it clear last week that he sees the counting of mail-in ballots as a threat to Oz’s campaign.
In fact, Trump called on his endorsee to just go ahead and declare victory because doing so would “makes it much harder for them to cheat with the ballots that they ‘just happened to find.'”
Read McCormick’s complaint below:
