PHILADELPHIA — With an all-but-certain recount looming in their primary contest, Republican Senate candidates Mehmet Oz and David McCormick have opened a new front in their battle over every ballot: the courts.
McCormick filed a lawsuit Monday in Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court seeking to compel all of the state’s counties to count ballots that were received on time but were missing a handwritten date on their envelope — a defect that would previously have led to them being rejected under state law. He based that request on a ruling in an unrelated case issued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which found last week that the date — or lack of one — on the ballot envelope was irrelevant to the vote’s legitimacy.
Meanwhile, the law firm that lost that before the Third Circuit on behalf of a GOP candidate for judge in Lehigh County pushed back. It told the Third Circuit’s judges Monday that it intended to challenge its decision at the U.S. Supreme Court — a move that could help the Oz camp. The law firm has also been representing the Oz campaign.
