Judicial battles are going on before the Senate race countdown

A separate litigation can take place in the U.S. Supreme Court if candidates are divided by less than 1,000 votes.

Despite this, counties will continue to count hundreds of ballots after the deadline – including temporary, military and withdrawal ballots abroad – and the competition is almost certainly aimed at a recount that will drag on into June.

In a statement to the Supreme Court, McCormick asked judges to order counties to obey a brand new decision of the Federal Court of Appeal and promptly count ballots sent by mail in which the return envelope lacks the required date by hand.

There are hundreds – if not thousands – of such ballots in county offices across the state, and McCormick is gaining enough votes to overtake Oz. Judges ordered the counties to respond by 4 p.m. on Thursday.

The state and national republican parties have signaled that they, like Oz, oppose the counting of the ballots in question.

In a statement, Matt Reimer, the Republican National Committee’s attorney general, said “electoral law must be enforced, and changing the rules, if the ballots are already being counted, harms the integrity of our election.”

McCormick is doing better than Oz in the postal vote, and insists that “every Republican vote should count.” McCormick campaign chairman James Schultz attacked State Party Chairman Lawrence Tabass, saying Tabass was “so little worried” by Republicans who voted for McCormick.

It is believed that Tabas should “cultivate Republican voters and unite the party, not throw them aside and kill wedges,” Schultz said.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Governor Tom Wolf’s administration issued instructions to counties stating that any undated ballots should be counted, citing a ruling by the U.S. District 3 Court of Appeals on Friday.

But it also says counties should keep these ballots separately – confirmation that lawyers for defendants in the Federal Court of Appeals have said they will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

McCormick’s lawsuit is the first, but probably not the last, lawsuit in a fight between Oz and McCormick.

Oz topped McCormick with 987 votes, or 0.07 percentage points, from 1,341,395 ballots reported by the state as of Tuesday afternoon.

Oz and McCormick are vying for a nomination to fight Democratic nominee John Fetterman on the presidential battlefield, which is expected to be one of the most competitive races in the country this fall. The seat is open because Republican Sen. Pat Toomie, who served two terms, is resigning, creating the best opportunity for Democrats to take a seat in the Senate, which is highly divided.

It is not clear exactly how many ballot papers by mail, which do not have a handwritten date, were received by the constituencies.

A ruling in a separate case Friday night, the U.S. District Court of Appeals said the state election law requirement regarding the date next to the voter’s signature on the outside of the back envelopes was “irrelevant.” The lawsuit came as a result of last year’s district election, and a panel of three judges said it found no reason to refuse to count the ballots in that race.

The ruling contradicted a position that Republicans in Pennsylvania have repeatedly appealed to the courts in the past to try to reject legitimate votes cast in a timely manner by voters because of technical details such as the lack of a handwritten date.

State law requires someone to write the date on the envelope in which they send their ballots. However, the envelope has a postmark of the post offices and a county stamp when they receive it.

In a statement Tuesday urging the state’s Supreme Court to act, McCormick’s lawyers wrote that district election commissions “did not report” the actual number of ballots that did not have handwritten dates on their envelopes. But they say they believe the number is probably in the thousands.

In previous court records, they said that the date the voter filled out the envelope had no bearing on whether they were eligible to vote and whether the ballot was submitted on time.

The law does not even require voters to record the exact date when they filled out the envelope, and does not help prevent any hypothetical acts of fraud, McCormick’s lawyers wrote.

“In short, meeting the meeting requirement serves only one purpose – to deprive qualified Pennsylvania voters who voted validly in a timely manner free of charge,” they wrote.