County officials will retabulate votes in the GOP primary race for U.S. Senate on Wednesday, June 1, as part of a statewide automatic recount that was triggered by the margin between candidates Mehmet Oz and David McCormick falling below a 0.5% threshold.
According to unofficial state results, Oz edged out McCormick by fewer than 1,000 votes. In Lebanon County, Oz received 6,113 votes compared to 5,958 for McCormick, a margin larger than the statewide figures.
Official notice for the recount was given on Wednesday, May 25, by acting Pennsylvania Secretary of State Leigh Chapman. Counties were ordered to complete their recounts by noon on June 7, with results to be submitted no later than the following day.
Counties must recount all ballots in a different method than they were originally counted.
Lebanon County’s recount will take place starting Wednesday, June 1, at Lebanon County Courthouse. Because the county has two types of voting machines, a hand recount will be avoided – the precinct machines will be used to count the mail-in ballots and the mail-in machine will be used to count the precinct ballots.
“It won’t make for good theater, but I’ll be going deliberately slow,” said county elections chief Sean Drasher in an email. “One precinct at a time.”
“As such, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this go on over the course of two days.”
Drasher said that his goal is to have the recounted completed by the end of the day Thursday.
“The State has laid out some good guidelines for us to follow, and we have a team that’s been through this before,” said Drasher. “I’m cautiously optimistic that in a week from now we will all be very tired but about all done a successful recount.”
Questions about this story? Suggestions for a future LebTown article? Reach our newsroom using this contact form and we’ll do our best to get back to you.
Free news isn’t cheap. If you value the journalism LebTown provides to the community, then help us make it sustainable by becoming a champion of local news. You can unlock additional coverage for the community by supporting our work with a one-time contribution, or joining as a monthly or annual member. You can cancel anytime.
More Top Stories
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
