The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Monday ordered election officials in the state to stop counting mail-in ballots marked with the wrong date or missing dates from their outer envelopes.
The court order specifies that Bucks, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties, where Republicans argue that officials have opted to count mail-in ballots with errors on their outer envelopes, must adhere to the high court's earlier rulings, which said undated or misdated mail-in ballots should not be counted.
The directive is a courtroom victory for Republican Dave McCormick, who holds a narrow lead over Democratic Sen. Bob Casey in a razor-thin Senate race that is headed to a recount this week.
Elizabeth Gregory, a spokesperson for McCormick's campaign, called the ruling "a massive setback to Casey’s attempt to count illegal ballots" in a post on X, adding that McCormick "looks forward to taking the Oath of Office in January."
McCormick declared victory Friday after The Associated Press projected him the winner. NBC News has not yet projected a winner in the race, which remains too close to call. McCormick leads Casey by 17,408 votes with 99.7% of the vote in and 24,000 ballots still to be counted.
Pennsylvania rules trigger a recount of ballots when the margin is less than 0.5 percentage points. The recount, set to begin this week, must be completed by noon Nov. 26.
Tiernan Donohue, a campaign manager for Casey, characterized the litigation in a statement Monday as part of an effort by McCormick and other Republicans to disenfranchise Pennsylvania voters.
“David McCormick and the national Republicans are working to throw out provisional ballots cast by eligible Pennsylvania voters and accepted by county boards. It is wrong and we will fight it,” Donohue said.
The Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of Pennsylvania had filed the petition seeking a court order, singling out election boards led by Democrats in Bucks, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties that had previously voted to tabulate ballots lacking correct dates.
The counties had decided to count those ballots under the reasoning that an incorrect date did not indicate that a voter was ineligible, nor did it suggest that the ballot was illegitimate.
Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro on Monday called on the counties to adhere to the high court’s ruling, while noting that a "lack of legal clarity" stemming from the undated mail-in ballots had "caused significant confusion and put counties in a challenging legal position."
"Both my predecessor and I have repeatedly called on lawmakers to deliver greater clarity on mail-in voting — and due to certain legislative actors refusing to act on critical election reforms, this issue had been left to the courts," Shapiro said.
"Given this lack of clarity, county officials in each of our 67 counties were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t — likely facing legal action no matter which decision they made on counting," he added.
