The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ordered election officials in Bucks, Montgomery, and Philadelphia counties to stop counting mail-in ballots with incorrect or missing dates on their outer envelopes. This comes as a victory for Republican Dave McCormick, who holds a narrow lead over Democratic Sen. Bob Casey in a closely contested Senate race. McCormick’s campaign sees this ruling as a setback to Casey’s attempt to count illegal ballots, while Casey’s campaign manager claims it is an effort by Republicans to disenfranchise voters.
McCormick declared victory based on projections, but NBC News has not yet projected a winner as the margin remains very close. With 24,000 ballots still to be counted, a recount will be triggered as the margin is less than 0.5 percentage points. The recount must be completed by noon on November 26.
The order from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was in response to a petition filed by the Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of Pennsylvania against election boards in the three counties that had chosen to count ballots with incorrect dates. The counties argued that an incorrect date did not necessarily make a voter ineligible or the ballot illegitimate. The court’s decision requires these counties to adhere to earlier rulings that undated or misdated ballots should not be counted.
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