Pa. Senate race goes into recount as Republicans file lawsuits over mail-in ballots

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Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt has officially announced the race to represent the state in the U.S. Senate has gone to an automatic recount, as required by law.

Meanwhile, Republicans have filed two more lawsuits seeking to stop the count of mail-in ballots, which they argue are ineligible due to a missing or incorrect date on the envelope.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Republican candidate Dave McCormick led incumbent Democrat Bob Casey by fewer than 30,000 votes in the vote count. That put the gap between the two candidates at 0.43%.

“Because that margin is less than 0.5%, state law required me to order a recount,” Schmidt told reporters in a telecast press conference. “Ultimately, all 67 counties’ final certified results will reflect all eligible votes cast in the 2024 general election.”

The latest numbers show that McCormick currently leads the race by just over 25,000 votes, with more than 80,000 provisional, mail-in and absentee ballots left to be counted. There have been four other state races that entered automatic recount; none of them overturned the unofficial vote tallies.

Coincidentally, McCormick was involved in one of those, in which he lost his primary race against Mehmet Oz for the U.S. Senate seat now held by John Fetterman. He lost that race by fewer than 1,000 votes.

In an effort to preserve his lead, McCormick has now filed a lawsuit against the Bucks County Board of Elections over 405 ballots that his lawyers argue are misdated or undated. Such ballots in Pennsylvania have been the subject of a years-long legal battle that has gone as far as the U.S. Supreme Court, with Republicans trying to keep them from being counted.

The Republican National Committee is party to that lawsuit, and has filed a similar suit against all 67 county boards.

The motion filed in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is “to ensure that Pennsylvania’s democratic process is not undermined by the inclusion of illegal ballots in the final vote count,” RNC Chairman Michael Whatley said in a statement.

Ironically, McCormick took the opposite tact in 2022, when he sued to count undated mail ballots during his recount against Oz, arguing that invalidating them would violate the Pennsylvania state constitution and that the date was “immaterial” to their validity.

“These ballots were indisputably submitted on time — they were date-stamped upon receipt — and no fraud or irregularity has been alleged,” the lawsuit stated.

McCormick won that suit, but still lost the race.

The county boards of elections must finish their recounts by Nov. 26 and the final results are scheduled to be released on Nov. 27.