Lawsuit seeks hand recount for GOP Senate race in 150 Pennsylvania voting precincts

Editors note: This story has been updated to reflect a change in the lawsuit listing specific voting precincts in 12 counties.

A new Commonwealth Court filing is asking for a hand recount in 150 voting precincts across 12 counties to determine the winner of the GOP U.S. Senate primary.

The May 31 petition, which includes the names of about 45 Republican voters, asks the court to order a “recount by hand” in the race between celebrity heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz and former hedge fund CEO Dave McCormick.

The initial lawsuit had referenced 150 voting precincts, but also explicitly said it was focused on voting precincts listed in an attached exhibit that listed every voting precinct in those counties.

That exhibit was an apparent oversight as an amended petition has since been filed that includes a shorter list of voting districts.

A hearing has been scheduled for June 6 at 10 a.m. at the Pennsylvania Judicial Center in Harrisburg. A link for an online stream of the hearing will be posted at www.pacourts.us before the hearing, according to court documents posted Thursday afternoon.

Unofficial results have Oz leading McCormick by just 922 votes, a narrow margin slim enough to trigger an automatic recount under a 2004 state election law. The law requires a recount if the margin between candidates is equal to 0.5% of the total votes cast in a race.

Oz took 419,510 ballots to McCormick’s 418,588 votes, a gap between the two equal to about 0.07% of the 1.34 million votes cast in the Senate race.

The Pennsylvania Department of State ordered a recount in the Republican Senate primary to begin by Wednesday, but Acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman said last week the counties had options regarding how they tallied the votes.

“The law requires that the county Board of Elections recount all ballots using a different device than the initial tabulation, or they can recount by hand,” Chapman said.

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This latest filing submitted Tuesday afternoon by members of McCormick’s legal team and the petitioners also seems to allege some kind of fraud or irregularities may be at play in the results.

“Petitioners believe, based on information they consider reliable, that fraud or error, although not manifest on the general return of votes was committed in the computation of votes cast, in the marking of the ballots, in the canvassing of the votes cast on the machines, or otherwise in connection with the ballots or casted votes in the election districts (named in an exhibit),” the petition states.

Of the counties named in the lawsuit, there are 24 precincts in Allegheny County; 31 precincts in Bucks County; five precincts in Centre County; 10 precincts in Chester County; five precincts in Cumberland County; 24 precincts in Delaware County; three precincts in Erie County; seven precincts in Lancaster County; three precincts in Monroe County; four precincts in Schuylkill County; 29 precincts in Westmoreland County and five precincts in York County.

Richard Tems, one of the Republican petitioners from Bucks County, said he signed on to the filing because he believes a hand recount would be appropriate in such a narrow race.

“I just want an honest election,” Tems said during a phone interview Tuesday.

Tems adds that he had heard of claims of an “overcount” in other counties but that he did not have any first-hand knowledge of those allegations and they were not related to him signing on to this new lawsuit.

Beverly Reihart, of northern York County, said she also signed on to the petition out of principle that the tight knit race needed to be accurate.

"We want to make sure it's accurate when it's that close," Reihart said. "It just bears checking."

McCormick is also involved in another lawsuit filed in the Commonwealth Court to require counties to include mail ballots missing handwritten dates on their secrecy envelopes.

The state department advised counties to include mail ballots with either missing or incorrect dates listed on outer return envelopes, but about eight counties indicated previously they did not plan on following that guidance.

While President Judge Cohn Jubelirer said a ruling on the case would soon follow a four-hour hearing yesterday, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling may render the issue moot or run out the clock for Pennsylvania’s recount.

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An order from Justice Samuel Alito paused a lower-court ruling in a lawsuit over a disputed 2021 local court election that would have allowed the counting of mail-in ballots that lacked a handwritten date, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia had ruled that the state election law’s requirement of a date next to the voter’s signature on the outside of return envelopes was “immaterial” and no reason to throw out such ballots.

The Supreme Court order stays a ruling on the circuit court decision until the court has fully considered the issue. There is no set deadline for the nation’s highest court to act, but Pennsylvania’s recount must be finished by June 8 under state law.

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McCormick’s attorneys say there could be enough ballots at issue in that case to at least further close the gap, while Oz and attorneys for the Republican National Committee have called the lawsuit a “desperate” attempt to scrounge up votes and asking the court to change the rules in the middle of a race.

It is unclear if the petition for the hand recount will affect all voting precincts in the 12 counties listed or just some of them.

While an exhibit listing the affected precincts mentioned early in the filing seems to list every polling place in each county, another section of the lawsuit could limit the count to just 150 precincts in total.

A request for comment from one of the lead attorneys in the filing was not immediately returned Wednesday afternoon.

York Daily Record reporter Teresa Boeckel contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Lawsuit seeks hand recount in PA GOP Senate race