The campaign of David McCormick Monday asked a Pennsylvania court “to count absentee and mail-in ballots that were returned on time but that lack a handwritten date on the exterior mailing envelope.” McCormick and Dr. Mehmet Oz are close candidates in the Republican primary contest for Pennsylvania’s open seat in the US Senate.

McCormick filed suit following a ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on May 20 in Miglioi v. Lehigh City. Bd. of Elections holding that federal law, specifically a Civil Rights Act provision, “prohibits county boards of election from rejecting absentee or mail-in ballots on that basis.” The campaign “seek[s] an order declaring that voters validly cast the ballots at issue, that the Boards must canvass these ballots, and that the Boards must report the unofficial results of this canvass to the Pennsylvania Department of State.”

Petitioners argue that, by refusing to count absentee and mail-in ballots simply because the handwritten date is missing on the outside of the mailing envelope, “the Boards are depriving likely thousands of voters of the right to vote[.]”