Provisional ballots under review in Allegheny County with Oz-McCormick race still undecided
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Nearly a week later, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania remains up in the air.
The Allegheny County Elections Return Board and 15 representatives from the Dave McCormick and Mehmet Oz campaigns gathered at the elections warehouse Monday to review provisional ballots with the board.
It's a tight race for Oz and McCormick with Oz beating McCormick by a little more than 1,000 votes. They're hoping these uncounted ballots will help them win.
County Elections Division Manager David Voye said there are about 2,000 provisional ballots that representatives can accept or challenge.
"It's pretty calm," Voye said at noon. "We've gone through probably roughly half of the provisional ballots cast, and I believe there is less than a dozen that they're appealing our decisions on."
Voye said they'll hold a special meeting to review the challenges. The accepted ballots will be processed and counted Monday.
However, they still have 218 undated ballots, 42 of them are Republican and 176 Democratic.
"They're kept off to the side," said Voye. "We're waiting for further guidance from the Department of State on how to handle those."
This comes after a federal court ruling on Friday determined undated ballots should be counted in a 2021 election.
Now McCormick's campaign is pushing for the undated votes to be counted in this election. His campaign spokesperson said the ballots are still post-marked when they're sent, so technically they're dated.
She also said in a statement:
"Every Republican primary vote should be counted...It's shocking and unfortunate that Mehmet Oz is advocating to throw out Republican primary votes."
Meanwhile, Oz's campaign is opposing McCormick's request. The campaign manager wrote in a statement quote:
"The McCormick legal team is following the Democrats' playbook, a tactic that could have long-term harmful consequences for elections."
Voye said they'll submit preliminary results by Tuesday evening.
