For more on the recount, follow the Inquirer’s coverage here.

A recount in Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate primary is expected to be announced by the state’s top elections official at a press conference Wednesday afternoon.

Acting secretary of state Leigh M. Chapman will “provide an update on the need for a recount” at 2 p.m. in the Capitol, the Pennsylvania Department of State said in an email advisory Tuesday afternoon.

A recount is all but certain, triggered by a state law that requires a recount when the margin of victory is within 0.5% of the total vote.

As of 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, with nearly all votes counted, celebrity TV doctor Mehmet Oz had 418,802 votes to former hedge fund CEO David McCormick’s 417,835.

That was a difference of 967, or just 0.072% of the counted vote.

Counties were required to report unofficial results — as close to final as possible — by 5 p.m. Tuesday, to be used by Chapman in determining whether a recount is required.

After announcing a recount Wednesday, Chapman would formally order the recount Thursday, and it would get underway next week.

A recount can be waived if the trailing candidate does so in writing by noon Wednesday, but the McCormick campaign has shown no interest in doing so. Instead, both campaigns have said they expect to win once the results are finalized.

Once called, this would be the seventh time Pennsylvania law triggered a recount, most recently in last November’s judicial race for the Commonwealth Court. Three of the previous recounts were declined by the losing candidate.

— Jonathan Lai

David McCormick has asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to take over his case seeking to have undated mail ballots in the state counted in his tight Senate primary contest with Mehmet Oz.

In a filing late Tuesday, campaign lawyers said it was essential the state’s highest court get involved to protect the fundamental constitutional rights of potentially thousands of Pennsylvania voters whose ballots were in danger of being rejected.

Earlier in the day, the McCormick campaign had asked the Commonwealth Court to issue an emergency injunction mandating the counting of those ballots — which were received on time but were missing the required handwritten date on their outer envelope — before a Tuesday evening deadline for counties to report their unofficial vote tallies to the state.

The Commonwealth Court had not responded by late Tuesday afternoon.

At issue are thousands of mail ballots which arrived missing the required handwritten date on the outer envelope.

Previously, they would have been rejected under state law, but a federal appeals court ruling last week in a case focused on the November 2021 general election held that the state’s requirement that voters date their envelope was immaterial to whether the ballot had been legitimately cast.

Though the appellate court offered no guidance in its ruling on how that should affect other elections, including this year’s primary vote, the decision sent counties and state election officials scrambling to determine whether they were now legally obligated to include undated ballots in their count.

“The right to vote is sacrosanct,” McCormick’s attorneys wrote Tuesday. “The handwritten date on an exterior mailing envelope that contains a receipt-stamp … is anything but.”

They urged the Supreme Court to exercise their “king’s bench” authority, which permits the justices to assume jurisdiction of a case at any stage of the legal proceedings.

The exact number of mail ballots at issue in the contest between McCormick and Oz remains unknown, but with their race separated by fewer than 1,000 votes and headed to an all-but-certain recount both campaigns are locked in a ballot-by-ballot battle.

Trailing Oz in the vote count, McCormick, who has performed better than Oz with mail ballots, is pushing county election officials to count as many votes as possible. State election officials on Tuesday advised counties to continue counting those undated mail ballots — but keep them separate due to ongoing litigation.

— Jeremy Roebuck

They seem like easy questions to answer, and elections officials across Pennsylvania keep hearing them: How many votes are left to be counted? And how many undated mail ballots are there?

With the Republican Senate primary headed toward an all-but-certain recount, a trickle of votes continues to get counted, and nobody has an exact number for how many more to expect.

That’s normal.

One big reason why information is so hard to come by right now is simple: Elections are run by counties, not the state.

While the Pennsylvania Department of State oversees elections, what’s thought of as one election is actually 67 simultaneous elections being run by 67 different counties. In each county, elections officials have to make their own decisions and run their own elections.

That’s why, for example, it’s referred to as guidance when the state issued advice to the counties Tuesday morning on how to handle undated mail ballots — it’s ultimately on each county board of elections, on the advice of the county solicitor, to decide what to do.

So to find out how many votes are left, we’d need to survey the 67 counties. That’s essentially what the Department of State has tried to do over the last few days, sending an online form to counties early Saturday morning asking them to tally the number of undated mail ballots from Democrats and Republicans.

But even the state has little additional insight into the number of outstanding ballots. Monday afternoon, for example, they told reporters there were about 11,300 Democratic mail ballots left to count and 5,400 Republican ones, “based on information received from counties.”

And it’s also hard to know the breakdown of the remaining votes. In the state’s email Monday with the numbers, it was clear they didn’t know exactly how many of those were ballots that would actually end up the total: “It is likely that the estimates include rejected ballots that have not yet been recorded.”

That’s because some votes will be rejected and not counted — and until all those decisions are made, it’s not possible to know how many of the remaining ballots will ultimately end up in the final count.

For example, counties have a number of provisional ballots that many of them are still working through. While counties know how many provisional ballots they have, there’s no way to know in advance exactly how many of those ballots will end up getting counted.

Similarly, some mail ballots with various defects may get counted, while others will get thrown out. So having 5,400 Republican mail ballots left, as the state estimated Monday, doesn’t mean there were that many more votes that will get counted.

Counties are required to submit unofficial numbers by 5 p.m. Tuesday that are their as-complete-as-possible results that the state uses in determining whether a recount is required by law. Counties will also submit estimates of remaining votes.

That will be the best statewide estimate available — but even that will be only an estimate, with the numbers changing a bit as provisional ballots and the final other votes are counted.

— Jonathan Lai

A top Pennsylvania Republican operative and adviser to David McCormick’s Senate campaign accused state GOP chairman Lawrence Tabas of trying to “invalidate” Republican votes by opposing McCormick’s lawsuit urging election officials to count undated mail ballots.

Jim Schultz, who previously served as senior White House counsel under former President Donald Trump, on Tuesday said the party’s opposition sends a message that Tabas “cares so little” about Republican voters who supported McCormick in Senate primary. Mehmet Oz currently leads McCormick by a hair-width margin of less than 1,000 votes ahead of an almost-certain recount.

“This is quite surprising since it is his job to grow GOP voters and bring the party together, not to cast them aside and drive wedges,” said Schultz, who has long helped run Republican campaigns in the state.

It is an unusually public but perhaps unsurprising criticism as the nationally watched vote count escalates tension among party insiders.

The aspersions come hours after the Republican National Committee and the state party signaled joint opposition to McCormick’s lawsuit — a move Republican leaders cast not as an endorsement of Oz, but rather about upholding election law precedent around undated mail ballots.

Trailing in the vote count, McCormick, who has performed better than Oz with mail ballots, is pushing county election officials to count as many votes as possible. State election officials on Tuesday advised counties to continue counting those undated mail ballots — but keep them separate due to ongoing litigation.

Tabas, an election law attorney in Philadelphia who has led the state Republican party since 2019, could not immediately be reached for comment.

— Max Marin and Jonathan Tamari

The Republican National Committee says it will intervene to oppose David McCormick’s lawsuit to count undated mail ballots in the ongoing vote count for the GOP Senate primary.

RNC chair Ronna McDaniel said in a tweet that the national committee, along with the state GOP party, would motion to intervene in the lawsuit filed Monday. In doing so both the RNC and the state party take the position of Mehmet Oz’s campaign.

“Pennsylvania law is clear: undated absentee ballots may not be counted,” McDaniel said. “Changing the rules while votes are being counted undermines the integrity of our elections and sets a terrible precedent for future elections.”

The RNC’s chief counsel, Matt Raymer said the opposition was not an endorsement of either candidate.

“The RNC is intervening in this lawsuit alongside the Pennsylvania GOP because election laws are meant to be followed,” Raymer said. “And changing the rules when ballots are already being counted harms the integrity of our elections. Either of Pennsylvania’s leading Republican Senate candidates would represent the Keystone State better than a Democrat, but Pennsylvania law is clear that undated absentee ballots may not be counted. This is another example of the RNC’s ironclad commitment to ensuring that the highest standards of transparency and security are upheld throughout the election process.”

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 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 before the Third Circuit 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.

“Both the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit have held that mail-in ballots should not be disqualified simply because the voters failed to hand write a date on the exterior mailing envelope of their ballots,” McCormick’s chief legal counsel Chuck Cooper said. “Because all ballots are time stamped by the County Boards of Elections on receipt, a voter’s handwritten date is meaningless. All timely ballots of qualified Republican voters should be counted.”

Oz and McCormick were separated by fewer than 1,000 votes Monday afternoon — well within recount territory under state law. McCormick, who has been trailing in the vote count, has pushed to count as many votes as possible and sees every additional vote as an opportunity to help close the gap. He’s also done better with mail ballots than Oz has.

» READ MORE: McCormick sues to have undated mail ballots counted as Senate race against Oz heads toward recount

— Julia Terruso and Jeremy Roebuck

Counties should count undated mail ballots but continue to keep those ballots separate because litigation is ongoing, state elections officials advised Tuesday morning.

The Pennsylvania Department of State, which oversees elections, issued the guidance shortly before 8:30 a.m. Tuesday.

“Now, in light of the conclusion of the Third Circuit in Migliori it is the Department’s position that ballots with an undated return envelope must also be counted for the May 18, 2022, Primary,” the guidance reads. “However, out of an abundance of caution the Department advises that those ballots should be segregated and remain segregated from all other voted ballots during the process of canvassing and tabulation.”

The department noted that it has not yet determined whether the undated ballots will be used in certifying the election results “given the ongoing litigation.”

While the undated ballots should be counted, the state guidance reads, those results should be reported separately to the state.

“Ballots that are signed and either undated or incorrectly dated are valid and must be counted,” the guidance reads, adding: “County boards of elections must maintain separate counts for undated and incorrectly dated ballots.”

Keeping contested ballots segregated from the rest of the vote is a common practice in elections, allowing elections officials to move forward with counting votes while litigation makes its way through the courts.

By counting the undated ballots but keeping them separate, the state can use those numbers in calling a recount later this week without mixing the ballots together in a way that would later be impossible to undo.

Reporting the vote results separately also has a practical effect: It allows the campaigns to see what they’re fighting over.

— Jonathan Lai

It’s been nearly a week since the Pennsylvania primary’s election day, but we still don’t know the winner of the Republican Senate race.

With a dental floss-thin margin between celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz and former hedge fund CEO David McCormick, the election is almost certainly headed to a recount. And a new court ruling last week could benefit McCormick in the process.

As of Monday afternoon, Oz had just 980 more votes than McCormick.

Some counties are still tallying their very last votes, such as overseas and military ballots that can arrive through Tuesday as long as they were postmarked by the May 17 election.

All counties are required to send unofficial vote counts to the Pennsylvania Department of State, which oversees elections, by 5 p.m. Tuesday. (Even then, those unofficial vote counts are not final — thanks to the last tallies of votes like provisional ballots — and will change slightly before a recount.)

It’s unclear exactly how many uncounted votes remain, but it’s a small number. At this point, it may be in the low hundreds.

— Jonathan Lai and Julia Terruso

It’ll take a while.

We’ll have the unofficial count Tuesday evening. That will tell us who’s on top heading into a recount — and how close the margin is.

Pennsylvania election law requires an automatic recount if the difference between the top two candidates for a statewide office is 0.5% of the vote or less.

A recount likely wouldn’t begin immediately after it’s ordered, which means recounted votes might not start streaming in until next week. As they do, we’ll start to get a sense of whether one candidate is picking up more votes in the recount.

The recount would need to be completed by June 7, with the final results announced June 8.

— Jonathan Lai and Julia Terruso

The legal fight for every single vote in Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate primary has begun.

Armies of attorneys representing David McCormick and Mehmet Oz, separated by a razor-thin margin in the ongoing vote count, had been descending on the state when a federal appeals court jolted the process Friday, ruling that undated mail ballots from Lehigh County in last fall’s election should be counted.

It did not immediately issue an opinion, but the text of the order, several lawyers from both political parties said, meant counties suddenly could — or perhaps even should — count undated mail ballots.

State law’s requirement that voters date their ballots — which state courts had said meant undated ballots should be rejected — isn’t actually used in determining whether a vote is legitimate, the judges ruled. That makes the requirement a technicality that, if used to reject ballots, violates the Civil Rights Act.

The fight over mail ballots now puts McCormick in the position of being a Republican defending a voting method that the GOP has spent the last two years attacking. Trump’s lies about election rigging and fraud have pushed Republicans to generally avoid voting by mail.

» READ MORE: The Oz and McCormick campaigns are already fighting over undated Pa. mail ballots as Senate primary recount looms

— Jonathan Lai