As problems mount with ballot counting and other election glitches, a recount in the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate primary appears imminent for Republican candidates Mehmet Oz and David McCormick, who both received at least 31 percent of the state’s votes on Tuesday.
As of Wednesday morning, the race between former President Donald Trump’s pick, Oz, and former George W. Bush administration official, McCormick, was too close to call. Both candidates, who beat out a long list of contenders including underdog candidate Kathy Barnette, indicated disappointment on Tuesday night that election results were not yet finalized but also expressed optimism that a victory is near.
“So, we’re not going to have a result tonight. When all the votes are tallied, I’m confident we’ll win,” Oz said. “We are making a ferocious charge, but when it’s this close, what else do you expect?”
“Unfortunately, we’re not going to have resolution tonight, but we can see the path ahead, we can see victory ahead, and it’s all because of you,” McCormick said in an address to his supporters.
One day after voters cast their in-person ballots, results in the state have been muddled and delayed by slow counting and technological failures.
In Lancaster County, one of the state’s largest population centers, a printing error resulted in ID codes being mislabeled on 22,000 mail-in ballots. Thanks to the mishap, a manual redo is required for more than two-thirds of the affected ballots, meaning full results for that county could be delayed a few days.
“About 22,000 mail ballots were printed by the print vendor with the incorrect code and could not be read by the county’s scanners. County election officials will re-mark the ballots by hand and then scan them. This is allowed under PA law. It is likely to take county officials a few days,” the Pennsylvania secretary of state’s office said in a statement.
Voters in Berks County, home to Reading, were allowed to cast provisional ballots during extended poll hours late Tuesday night after the county reported issues with its new electronic poll books.
“The County of Berks is aware of an issue impacting the new electronic pollbooks and is distributing backup paper pollbooks to polls throughout the county. The details behind the issue will be reviewed after Election Day and a full and detailed explanation will be provided at that time,” Stephanie Weaver, public relations officer for the county, said in a statement.
As of Wednesday, tens of thousands of mail-in ballots, which amounts to 5 percent of the vote tally, were still waiting to be counted.
Whichever candidate eventually wins the GOP Senate primary will face off in November with Pennsylvania’s Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who suffered a stroke four days before election day and received a pacemaker on Tuesday. He also once wrongly chased down an unarmed black jogger and held him up with a shotgun after hearing nearby gunshots.
