Recount in GOP Senate primary between Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick underway
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - The Elections Division in Allegheny County is recounting the votes cast in the Republican primary.
Right now, there are less than 1,000 votes between Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick, and neither campaign is giving up.
In Allegheny County, over 288,000 total votes were cast, 93,000 of which were Republican voters.
"Eighty-four-thousand absentee or mail-in ballots cast today will be calculated on this DS200. Election ballots, which are about 180,000, will be scanned on our high-speed scanners. Drop those into our database and we'll come up with a new set of results," said elections division manager David Voye.
Ballots have to be counted differently than they were the first time around. Voye said they can use scanners, just not the same one the vote was counted with on election day.
McCormick's campaign filed a new petition to have hand recounts in hundreds of precincts across 12 counties, including Allegheny and Westmoreland counties.
McCormick's campaign says they have questions about voting discrepancies, mainly mail-in ballots that were on time but not dated. That's about 800 ballots. They're concerned those discrepancies resulted in "fraud or error."
Dr. Oz, who is already calling himself the "presumptive nominee," is against counting the 800 or more ballots. State law says you must have a date for a mail-in ballot to count.
For hours on Tuesday, both campaigns argued whether the ballots should be counted or not. The state believes the ballots should be counted, while the state GOP is arguing against it.
"Do we know who the voter intended to vote for, well yes they've told us? Does it comply with the technical requirements of state law at the time of legal votes, probably not," said Chris Bonneau, Pitt Political Science Professor.
Counties will have to finish the process by next Tuesday, June 7th. Then, on June 8th, the Department of State will announce the results. Also, according to the Department of State, the recount is expected to cost more than one million dollars in taxpayer funds.