Staff Reports
As the dispute over which mail-in ballots to count in Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate primary continues, the Associated Press reports that Dr. Mehmet Oz has won the support of the national Republican Party.
According to the Associated Press, the party is supporting Oz’s effort to bar counties from including mail-in ballots without a required handwritten date on the return envelope in their unofficial results. On Monday, his opponent, David McCormick, filed a lawsuit in an attempt to compel counties to count all mail-in ballots, regardless of whether the date was handwritten or not.
According to the Associated Press, McCormick, the former Undersecretary of the Treasury for International Affairs and current CEO of Bridgewater Associates, filed the complaint less than 24 hours before the deadline for counties to announce their unofficial results. The complaint demands that counties follow a federal appeals court decision announced on May 20, which said that absent-date mail-in ballots must be counted.
“Once we have counted all Republican votes received on time, we will unite behind a strong GOP nominee to defeat socialist John Fetterman in the fall. All Republicans should be focused on that goal, ” Jess Szymanski, a McCormick campaign official, said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
According to the Associated Press, the RNC has announced that it will fight McCormick’s lawsuit in court.
In a statement to the Associated Press, Republican National Committee general counsel Matt Raymer stated, “Election laws are meant to be followed, and changing the rules when ballots are already being counted harms the integrity of our elections,”
According to the Associated Press, Oz, who is backed by former President Donald Trump, held a 992 vote lead over McCormick as of Tuesday morning. The margin of 0.07 percent is considerably below the 0.5% threshold that triggers an automatic recount.
It’s unclear how many mail-in ballots are missing a handwritten date on the envelope, but the Associated Press reports that McCormick has done better with mail-in ballots overall than Oz.
The DCNF reached out to Oz’s campaign and the Republican National Committee for comment.
The preceding is a summary of an article that originally appeared on WND.
