Allegheny County recount begins for Pa.’s Republican U.S. Senate race
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Election workers in Allegheny County on Wednesday braved the heat inside the county’s election warehouse on Pittsburgh’s North Side to conduct a recount of votes cast in the May 17 primary.
The recount was triggered by a state law because the race between celebrity surgeon Mehmet Oz and former hedge fund CEO David McCormick was within a 0.5 percentage point margin. Before the recount began, Oz led McCormick by 920 votes, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State.
Oz had secured 31.2% of the vote before recounts began, while McCormick had 31.1% of the vote, unofficial tallies showed.
It’s unclear how the recount will affect the race. Philadelphia, the state’s largest county, netted Oz one additional vote after its recount was completed.
The arduous process recounts all of Allegheny County’s ballots, including those in the Democratic and Republican primary. As required by state law, Allegheny County will be counting the in-person ballots and the mail-in ballots on different scanning machines than what were used in the initial count.
For the recount, in-person ballots are being counted on DS 850 high-speed scanners, which were initially used for county mail-in ballots. And mail-in ballots are being recounted on DS 200 precinct scanners, which were initially used to count in-person ballots.
There are 292,633 ballots to recount, including 196,642 in-person ballots, 92,224 mail-in and absentee ballots, and 1,799 provisional ballots. Of those, there are 93,440 ballots in the GOP Senate race to recount in Allegheny County.
As of 4 p.m. on Wednesday, 69% of the in-person ballots had been scanned and all mail-in and provisional ballots had been scanned. County officials said reconvence on Thursday at 8 a.m. to finish scanning. Once scanning is complete, the Elections Division will begin review of the ballots containing overvotes.
Also complicating the matter is a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that temporarily blocked the counting of undated mail-in ballots. The future of those ballots — which arrived on time and were timestamped but lacked handwritten dates from voters — will be determined by the Supreme Court at a later date when the court has time to consider the decision.
The McCormick campaign is asking for those undated mail-in ballots to be added to the tally, while the Oz campaign has argued against adding them. Mail-in ballots have leaned in McCormick’s direction.
A request for comment from the Oz campaign regarding Allegheny County’s recount was not immediately returned.
It’s unclear if Allegheny County’s recount will be completed Wednesday, as county officials were unsure if the workers could finish scanning by the end of the day.
However, even if workers finished scanning all ballots on Wednesday, the recount process might continue beyond that.
The McCormick campaign said it is also requesting a hand recount in 12 counties, including Allegheny. According to a senior McCormick campaign official, the campaign believes a hand recount will address any outstanding discrepancies they have seen between county and state data.