The Colorado Springs Gazette final

Court battles go down to count deadline in Pa. Senate race

BY MARC LEVY

HARRISBURG, PA. • Former hedge fund CEO David Mccormick went to Pennsylvania’s highest court Tuesday in an eleventh-hour bid to help him close the gap in votes with celebrity heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania’s neck-and-neck Republican primary contest for U.S. Senate.

Mccormick’s request for the state Supreme Court’s intervention came less than four hours before Tuesday’s 5 p.m. deadline for counties to report their unofficial results to the state elections office.

A separate court battle could go to the U.S. Supreme Court, with the candidates separated by fewer than 1,000 votes.

Even so, counties will continue counting hundreds of ballots after the deadline — including provisional, military and overseas absentee ballots — and the contest is almost certainly headed for a recount that will drag into June.

In the filing with the state Supreme Court, Mccormick asked justices to order counties to obey a brand-new federal appeals court decision and promptly count mail-in ballots that lack a required handwritten date on the return envelope.

There are hundreds — if not thousands — of such ballots sitting in county offices across the state, as Mccormick scrapes for enough votes to overtake Oz.

The justices ordered counties to respond by 4 p.m. Thursday.

The state and national Republican parties have signaled that they — like Oz — oppose counting the ballots in question.

NATION & WORLD

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2022-05-25T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-05-25T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://daily.gazette.com/article/281724093170261

The Gazette, Colorado Springs