- Republicans are going to court in Pennsylvania amid vote counting in the U.S. Senate election between Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and Republican David McCormick, with the contest headed toward a state-mandated recount.
- As of Friday morning, McCormick led by about 24,000 votes out of more than 6.9 million ballots counted.
- The lawsuits filed ask courts not to allow counties to count mail-in ballots where the voter didn’t write a date on the return envelope or wrote an incorrect date.
The national and state Republican parties asked the state Supreme Court to bar counties from counting the ballots, saying those decisions violate both the court's recent orders and its precedent in upholding the requirement in state law.
In a statement, the Pennsylvania Republican Party chair, Lawrence Tabas, said, “What's taking place in these counties is absolute lawlessness.”
Democratic-majority election boards in Montgomery County, Philadelphia, Bucks County and Centre County voted to count the ballots.
Democrats cast more mail-in ballots than Republicans, and Democrats in the past have supported counting ballots that trip over what they view as meaningless clerical requirements in state law.
“We’re talking about constitutional rights and I cannot take an action to throw out someone's ballot that is validly cast, otherwise, over an issue that we know ... is immaterial,” Montgomery County Commissioner Neil Makhija, a Democrat, said during a Thursday meeting in voting to count 501 such ballots.
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