Pennsylvania voter sending in their ballot. Without following correct procedure, a ballot is known as a naked ballot and it won't be counted. HARRISBURG - A federal court ruled Friday that mail-in ballots without a required date on the return envelope must be allowed in a 2021 Pennsylvania county judge race, a decision that could complicate the ongoing process of vote counting in the state's neck-and-neck U.S.
Senate Republican primary.Elections officials, lawyers and candidates are scrambling to understand and respond to the 3rd U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals decision, which was issued late in the day without a written opinion laying out its rationale.It had an immediate effect in Pennsylvania's too-close-to-call Republican primary contest for U.S.
Senate, where counties are still adding up votes in the race between celebrity heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz and former hedge fund executive David McCormick.McCormick has been doing better than Oz among mail-in ballots and McCormick's campaign quickly wrote to the state's 67 counties to advise them of the decision and request a hearing if they won't count the ballots in question.The number of mail and absentee votes at issue in the Lehigh County judge race is 257, enough to potentially sway the results.