Posted on 05/19/2022 8:50:15 PM PDT by lightman
With Pennsylvania’s county election administrators continuing to chew through mail-in and absentee ballots Thursday, the front-runners in the nearly deadlocked Republican U.S. Senate primary offered both argued that their paths to victory remained wide open.
That case seemed a little bit easier for Dr. Mehmet Oz’s team Thursday night, as the cardiac surgeon-turned-daytime television superstar still held a 1,123 vote lead over former Wall Street executive David McCormick.
As of presstime for this story, that broke down as follows: Oz, 417,719, or 31.2 percent; McCormick 416,596, or 31.1 percent. That’s with an estimated 98.6 percent of the vote in, according to The Associated Press.
But, to be sure, McCormick’s team was conceding nothing.
“We feel quite confident that when every vote that’s been cast is counted, that Dave McCormick is going to be the Republican nominee for the United States Senate from Pennsylvania,” a senior McCormick official said.
The spinning aside, there likely won’t be clarity on this race until Tuesday, when the deadline passes for the receipt of ballots from deployed military service members and Pennsylvanians overseas, and county elections officials have made final determinations on what provisional ballots do and don’t make the final cut.
With the benefit of background calls from both campaigns where officials gave their assessment of where things stand, here’s a closer look at why Team McCormick hasn’t run up the white flag just yet, and why Team Oz says that eventually they will be. The Continued Mail-in Count
As of 6 p.m. Thursday, according to Department of State tallies, McCormick was winning 32.1 percent of the mail-in vote in the primary, with Oz second at 23.1 percent.
State spokesman Mark Walters said late Thursday that the department is estimating there are about 8,700 Republican mail-in and absentee ballots left to count. McCormick’s team believes there may be more. But taking State’s estimate at face value, if the candidates continued to get the same vote share from that group, McCormick could gain 785 votes on Oz.
Oz sources argued that is McCormick’s last best shot to win, and they said it looks to them as if there simply aren’t enough uncounted ballots out there to for McCormick - if he does continue to lead in this category - to catch up.
“We are confident Dr. Oz will win this race,” an Oz campaign staffer said.
But McCormick’s strategists said they have two other cards to play. Updated Election Day Results
There doesn’t appear to be room for a lot of movement here, but McCormick’s staff said they had identified 65 precincts in Philadelphia, Allegheny and Delaware counties where final vote totals stand to be revised starting Friday, largely because of mistakes made by polling place workers.
McCormick’s team says the Philadelphia shifts will be de minimus because there are barely any GOP voters in the affected districts.
Jim Allen, director of election operations in Delaware County, said the results in four affected precincts there amounted to a net gain of 16 votes for McCormick, and have already been added to its count.
Which brings us to Allegheny County, where miscues by precinct workers resulted in incomplete counts in 31 polling places.
McCormick has been running ahead of the field in his once and future home county, polling 38.8 percent of the Election Day count. Oz was second, at 33.4 percent. If the registered Republicans in the affected precincts turned out at a rate consistent with the county as a whole, and the candidates received the same vote share as they did on Election Day, McCormick could pick up a net 100 votes on. Oz.
“The math (for McCormick) just isn’t there from the areas that we were able to find,” an Oz official said. Overseas and Military Voters
These special categories of Pennsylvanians abroad can have their ballots received through next Tuesday.
Right now there are 1,582 - between both parties - that are awaiting processing statewide, according to McCormick’s team, and that number could grow. The vast majority of these are civilians: As an example, Allegheny County said that they have ballots in hand from 140 civilians and 11 service members so far.
There will likely be some more by next Tuesday.
This is a complete wildcard at this pojnt, but McCormick’s staff claimed that they had made a significant investment in outreach to these voters, so they hope they are mostly Republican, and that those Republicans will vote for McCormick at an even higher rate given his background as a West Point graduate who went on to serve in the Army’s revered 82nd Airborne.
“If you just give us a thousand of those (as Republican ballots), I think they’d probably pick the 82nd Airborne paratrooper over the Turkish Army surgeon,” the McCormick campaign official said. Provisional Ballots
After all the above buckets are emptied, there’s still the matter of provisional ballots.
These are the votes cast by first-time voters who are required to show ID but couldn’t produce one, voters who asked for a mail-in ballot but but didn’t fill it out and turned up to vote in person without officially surrendering their mail-in; or people who moved to a new address and didn’t updated your registration, but might still be eligible to vote for statewide races like governor and U.S. Senate.
County officials will start reviewing them Friday morning, and according to state guidelines are to render decisions on who’s vote is good, and who’s isn’t, by the close of business Tuesday, or seven days after the election.
For context, in the 2020 presidential election, about 1.5 percent of all votes cast in Pennsylvania started as provisional ballots. In most elections, that’s not seen as too big of a deal. But in this Senate race, that could be an additional 10,000 Republican votes.
It sure feels like they’re going to matter quite a bit this spring, doesn’t it?
The winner of the GOP race will advance into what is expected to be a hotly-contested and nationally-watched general election campaign against Pennsylvania’s Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who easily won the Democratic Party nomination.
At least McCormick is a real American and not a Turkish voting Turk.
Yeah! There is nothing like being betrayed by your own people. But that is what the American People enjoy. Need proof? Just about every Republican, if not all, who betrayed President Trump in the theft of the 2020 election was returned to Power by the American voters, A/K/A, the American Public.
Trump-supported candidates unseated many incumbents
He’s batting over .960
Until you get shot in a war, you RINO-kneepadding simpleton.
Yeah, "just give us a thousand" - who talks like that? Democrats talk like that.
Where the hell was McCormick's staff in 2020, doing this same due diligence for President Trump?
Oh no, it can't be! PA actually admitting election day mistakes? Who wrote this article? Arrest that man!
How is it that nearly every single surrounding state had their shit together WITHIN TWO HOURS on Election Night -- even deep blue states! -- and PA didn't have, and STILL doesn't have, enough people who can count over 10.
True, but Mike Pence will never hold another elective office and the GOPe is getting it’s ass kicked. I wish Trump had formed the MAGA party but taking over the GOP is the next best thing.
That is two big chances.
1) Fetterman will die in office.
2) Republican gubbernor???
You are an obvious: Flavious Maximus Assholeius.
So go ahead and don't vote, but if fetterman wins a close one in November and shapiro wins and I am still alive, I will be back to remind you and your brood that it is your fault.
Total loser.
OK, so I went to your site for solace but I still will not vote for a Turkish citizen to represent Pennsylvania senate.
I see that many coming into this country are just like him!
Pennsylvania election law does not permit the counting of ANY form of ballot before poll closing.
Can you imagine the level of fraud if the early tally of the VBMs and absentees weren’t as desired by TBTB?
That’s right. Evil is his real name.
I too, went to my site for solace, found none and will have to say hundreds of Rosaries so that maybe, I can vote for mohammed oz.
I live within 20 miles of Braddock and have witnessed festerman and what he had done to help destroy that town.
It was not all of his fault, but his communist principles aided in the total downfall of that city.
festerman is a true believer and his wife is worse.
So it's not that I like oz, it's just that festerman is further to the left than vermont bernie, and we cannot "hope" that a pubbie will become gubbernor nor that festerman will die in office.
The risk is too great, and while I hate the thought of drinking urine, it's better than arsenic.
Fetterman looks like an inmate on death row.
My thoughts as well.....You have to wonder why Demorats pick such people unless the better people just don’t want to assoiciate themselves with the party now it’s destroying the counry.
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