Allegheny County continues to count ballots in tight U.S. Senate race

The Allegheny County election return board reconvened Monday to start reviewing and counting about 2,000 provisional ballots that had been submitted for the May primary.

While the process plays out each election, with workers slowly reviewing ballots in the Allegheny County elections warehouse in Pittsburgh’s North Side, a closely contested race for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination is adding pressure to the count this year.

In the warehouse, a total of 15 representatives from the campaigns of Republican candidates Dave McCormick, a former hedge fund CEO, and Mehmet Oz, a celebrity television personality, were watching and participating in the provisional count process.

Oz led by 1,067 votes over McCormick out of the more than 1.3 million votes cast as of late Monday morning, according to unofficial results. Oz had 31.2% of the votes counted compared with McCormick’s 31.1%, the unofficial tallies showed.

Regardless of the additional votes counted in Allegheny County, a recount appears to be likely in the race, as state law triggers an automatic recount for statewide contests that are within 0.5 percentage points.

Allegheny County Elections Division Manager David Voye said he expected about half of the 2,000 provisional ballots to be tallied this afternoon, but the other half are still being researched by the division and will likely be reviewed and counted tomorrow.

Voye said there have been fewer than a dozen challenges to the provisional ballots so far. He said the process so far has been “pretty calm” and he expects the same when provisional ballots are reviewed and counted tomorrow.

Allegheny County also has undated mail-in ballots that could contribute to the total vote tally. These are ballots that were mailed in before the deadline and have been timestamped, but voters forgot to write a date on their ballots.

The McCormick campaign wants these ballots counted, while the Oz campaign contends they shouldn’t be. McCormick has won a greater share of mail-in ballots than Oz. In 2021, a federal judge in Pittsburgh ruled that undated ballots involved in a local state Senate race should be counted.

County officials said there were 218 undated mail-in ballots in Allegheny County, including 176 Democratic ballots and 42 Republican ones. Allegheny County will not count those ballots until they get direction from the Pennsylvania Department of State, county spokeswoman Amie Downs said.

Voye said Allegheny County also has to provide the state with an estimate of how many uncounted ballots are left by end of day Tuesday. Those should also include all the overseas and military ballots that are due Tuesday. There are 349 possible overseas/military ballots in Allegheny County, but it’s likely only about half of those will be returned.