DV Journal

A recent Our Community Salutes event at the Brookside Manor in Feasterville honored 15 high school seniors who joined the military.

About 125 family members, friends, and community members attended.

Republican Dave McCormick, a West Point graduate, who joined the 82nd Airborne Division, served in Iraq in the Gulf War, and ran for Senate in 2022, spoke to the young recruits and gave them signed copies of his new book, “Superpower in Peril.”

“First of all, America needs you,” said McCormick. “What you’re about to do is very important.”

He later tweeted, “I am so impressed by your commitment to serve and know your time in uniform will be as memorable for you as it was for me. Thank you for answering the call to serve.”

McCormick is widely believed to be considering another U.S. Senate run in 2024.

Parent Jenny Mars read a poem about how she feels about being the parent of an enlisted person. “You filled my days with needs for which I could help. Then joined the military, and my heart melted. You may be taking this step and leaving my nest. But you are still a part of me—the part that’s the best!”

Bensalem High School ROTC Color Guard

The Marine enlistees honored were David Ferry, Liam Robinson, Kayla Mayberry, Alex Moya, Daniel Rainville, Jordan Pearson, Ainsley Janonne-Naugler, Sam Riddle, Aaron Benjamin, Nabil Arkadan, and John Chavez.

The Army enlistees were  Brayden Schneider, James Radyn (Army National Guard), Rosemarie Overholt (Army National Guard), and Daniel Harvey.

Aanya Joanne Moore, who organized the OCS event, said her son, Wayne Moore, has served in the Navy for 15 years, and she is active in the Coast Guard Axillary.

All of the enlistees were asked to have their parents stand by them. In a “wonderful moment,” each recruit presented their Blue Star mom with a red carnation and a Blue Star mom lapel pin and gave their dad an American flag pin. The recruits received challenge coins, wooden hang tags made by a veteran in Indiana from the American Veterans of Buckingham Springs, and an American flag flown over the Capitol.

“It was quite moving,” said Moore. “It not only recognizes the recruits, but it also involves their parents, who have no idea what will happen next, especially during boot camp.”

Bucks County High School Army Recruits

Moore, a New Hope resident, grew up with her late father, Stanley Magdalinski, who would remove shrapnel from places in his arms and legs as it worked its way out. She said the military doctors had wanted to amputate, but he wouldn’t let them.

Magdalinski did not talk much about his military experience, but he was injured when his tank was blown up during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II and received the Purple Heart.

“He was a man of few words,” she said. “But when he said something, it meant a lot. He said, ‘Why do we have to die to get recognized?”

“And he said, ‘It starts from the day that your dot your I’s and cross your T’s.’ So, I’ve always had a soft heart for the military.”

Her father passed away on Veteran’s Day, she said.

Cadet Gianna Mars sang the national anthem, and Kenneth J. Sylvester, ACS Chaplain, U.S. Coast Guard, gave the invocation. And Air National Guard Staff Sergeant David Jacoby served as master of ceremonies. Representatives from Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick’s office also attended.

Since 2009, OCS enlistee recognition ceremonies have been held by local communities nationwide. The events show appreciation f the young men and women who volunteer to serve in the military. Only 1 percent of Americans serve in uniform.

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Congrats, Pennsylvania — You made Mitch McConnell’s final four.

In an interview with CNN, the Senate’s GOP leader laid out what he believes is the most likely path for Republicans to regain control, and it runs through four states: Montana, West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

McConnell and many GOP pundits say Republicans are on track in West Virginia, where popular Gov. Jim Justice has announced he plans to run for the seat currently held by Sen. Joe Manchin. The two-term Democrat has not said if he will run for reelection next year in a state Trump carried by 40 points in 2020.

The other states are less settled, particularly Pennsylvania, where Republican strategists believe Dave McCormick would have the best chance to stop Democrat Sen. Bob Casey from winning a record fourth term. But McCormick may have to get past state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who polls show remains popular with GOP primary voters despite his crushing defeat in last year’s gubernatorial race against now-Gov. Josh Shapiro.

According to CNN, McConnell and the NRSC “are expected to go all-out for McCormick, whom the GOP leader called a ‘high-quality candidate.’”

And what about Mastriano? “I think everybody is entitled to run. I’m confident the vast majority of people who meet Dave McCormick will be fine with him,” McConnell said.

“The Senate GOP Leader understands what nearly all Republican leaders here know,” Republican strategist Christopher Nicholas told DVJournal. “Only Dave McCormick can give Casey a run for his money in 2024.”

There has been little polling about a GOP primary, but the available data give Mastriano a lead. Pennsylvania GOP pros say the passion for Mastriano in the MAGA section of the party remains strong. At the same time, losing the Senate seat in 2022, particularly to John Fetterman, a left-of-center candidate with significant health issues, sent a shockwave through the state GOP, one source told DVJournal.

“There is no ‘MAGA’ magic,” the source said. “If they really don’t care about winning [the general election], then we just have to find a way to beat them.”

Republicans may need to pull out all the stops in Pennsylvania. In Montana, another state Trump carried big, popular incumbent Sen. Jon Tester (D) has already said he will run again, giving his party its best chance of holding the seat. And while Ohio has been trending red for more than a decade, incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) is a populist Democrat in the mold of Sen. Bernie Sanders. He may be particularly tough to beat, as well.

So even though Democrats have to defend more than twice as many seats as Republicans next year (23 to 11), McConnell laughed when asked if he was confident about the GOP’s chances.

“No, no – I’m not,” McConnell said. “I just spent 10 minutes explaining to you how we could screw this up, and we’re working very hard to not let that happen.”

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On Wednesday, stacked copies of Dave McCormick’s new book “Superpower in Peril: A Battle Plan to Renew America” stood ready at the entrance to the 28th-floor office suite of the Philadelphia law firm Cozen O’Connor.

Nearby, friends, fans, and acquaintances vied for a chance to talk to the author and, perhaps more importantly, potential 2024 Senate candidate.

McCormick, the former Bridgewater CEO, ran for the U.S. Senate in 2022 and narrowly lost the Republican primary to Dr. Mehmet Oz. Speculation has swirled that he is considering a challenge to incumbent Sen. Bob Casey (D) next year. His appearance Wednesday did nothing to dampen that speculation.

McCormick told DVJournal he was still mulling the decision and would move forward after discussing the matter with his family. Sources close to McCormick told DVJournal he would decide by late summer.

Casey announced his re-election bid this week. McCormick said Wednesday he always expected the Democrat to run for a fourth term and that Casey’s announcement does not affect his decision-making process. He is also unconcerned about a possible bid by fellow Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Franklin).

Bellevue Communications Vice President Jeff Jubelirer said McCormick would “be a very formidable candidate against any Republican primary challenger as well as Sen. Casey.”

“I believe Republicans will overwhelmingly support McCormick in the primary, barring any surprises,” he said. “His background and roots in Pennsylvania, in addition to his strong conservative credentials, will make him tough to beat. And frankly, I believe he would have been a stronger opponent against Sen. John Fetterman than Dr. Oz.”

A recent Franklin & Marshall poll showed although only 29 percent of registered voters think Casey is doing an excellent or good job as senator, the Democrat nonetheless leads McCormick 42 to 35 percent and Mastriano 47 to 31 percent among potential voters.

McCormick told the 100 or so well-wishers at the book signing that he and co-author James Cunningham wrote “Superpower in Peril” because they believe America is “headed in the wrong direction.”

“We’re at $31 trillion in debt,” McCormick said. “We have a 40-year high in inflation. For the first time in the post-war period, the likelihood of getting out of the fourth quartile (of income) and making your way into the third, second, or first quartile is at an all-time low.”

“We’re being challenged on the global stage by China,” continued McCormick. “China is a threat, and our ability to take on that threat is diminishing by the day. And there’s a spiritual crisis. We’re in decline spiritually.”

“Our institutions, our schools, are teaching a version of American history that doesn’t say America is an exceptional country, with all its faults, that’s constantly gotten better,” he added. “And we see it in business where a progressive ideology that’s really chipping away at the basic premises of merit. We see in the military where the Army released its climate change strategy before it released its war-fighting strategy.”

The possible Senate hopeful is optimistic, saying the country has been through similar declines in the past. “We need a leadership agenda,” he said. “We need selfless leaders, visionary leaders that are going to take the country in the right direction.”

“That’s where we’ll find our way, in people stepping up and leading,” he said, noting many of those in the room had run for office or served in government.

McCormick, a Pittsburgh resident, served as undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs under President George W. Bush. He grew up on a family Christmas tree farm in Bloomsburg. His father was chancellor at Bloomsburg University and for the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education.

McCormick himself graduated from West Point and spent five years in the Army, serving in the first Gulf War.

Jubelirer said a potential Casey/McCormick matchup would be a “race to watch” that could “break or come close to breaking all Pennsylvania Senate campaign spending records to date.”

Pat Poprik, chair of the Bucks County Republican Committee, attended the event and said she will support McCormick if he runs.

“He has a great resume with excellent experiences in government, military, and building and growing very successful businesses,” Poprik said.

“I believe all of those life experiences will give him a better understanding of how to fix our government and to make decisions of significant importance that affect our country.”

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Although 2024 may seem like a long time away, politics has its own timeline.

Sen.  Bob Casey (D-Pa.) announced Monday that he is running again.

“Folks, I’m running for re-election. There’s still more work to do to cut through the gridlock, stand up to powerful special interests, and make the lives of hardworking Pennsylvanians easier,” Casey tweeted.

Democrats hope for a repeat of 2022, keeping abortion as the major wedge issue and downplaying economic concerns. Casey may make that strategy a bit trickier, however, having voted for some moderate restrictions on abortion in the past. Just last year, NPR described Casey as “an anti-abortion-rights Democrat,” despite his support for federal legislation allowing legal abortion without restriction at any point during a pregnancy.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee promptly responded to Casey’s announcement.

“From risking Pennsylvania workers’ pensions in Chinese state-run companies to using his Senate seat to enrich his family, Bob Casey has made a career of shady self-dealing and selling his voters out to the highest bidder,” said NRSC spokesman Philip Letsou.

Lawrence Tabas, chair of the Pennsylvania GOP said, “Bob Casey has shown time and time again that he has no problem putting his interests before those of his constituents. Pennsylvania deserves a Senator that will stand up for their values, not use their seat to enrich their own family. I’m confident that the Republican nominee will demonstrate to voters across the commonwealth that it’s time to send Casey back to Scranton.”

The National Republican Party is hoping Dave McCormick, who lost a Senate primary narrowly to Dr. Mehmet Oz in 2022, will be the party’s nominee to challenge Casey. But it looks like he’ll have to get past firebrand state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Franklin) first. Mastriano, who lost to Democrat Josh Shapiro in the governor’s race by nearly 15 points last year, has. strong support from members of the MAGA GOP base.

“Taking on any incumbent is challenging,” Mastriano told DVJournal. “Casey’s challenge is that other than running on his dad’s name, he’s an unremarkable senator who’s more interested in being a lackey for the radical left than fighting for Pennsylvania.”

McCormick said, “Bob Casey votes for Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer’s failing, far-left agenda 100 percent of the time. Thanks to Casey’s support for open borders, 5,000 Pennsylvanians lost their lives to fentanyl in 2020 alone. Pennsylvania is the second biggest gas-producing state in the country, yet Casey’s support for leftist energy policies has cost our state thousands of jobs. And even though Philadelphia has one of the highest murder rates in the country, Casey has done nothing to fight crime and instead has supported dangerous policies. A vote for Casey is a vote for Biden and Schumer — he’s a Washington insider and not a leader we can count on to deliver a better future for our great commonwealth.”

Is the party ready for Mastriano, or would the GOP faithful prefer McCormick?

National Republican Senate Committee Chair Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), who oversees the group’s candidate recruitment, said via Twitter: “We need somebody who can win a primary and a general election. (Mastriano’s) last race demonstrated he couldn’t win a general.”

However, a Public Policy poll in March showed Mastriano well ahead of McCormick among GOP primary voters, at 39 percent to 21 percent. Kathy Barnette, who came in third in the primary in 2022, had 11 percent.

Well-known radio host Dom Giordano, who writes a column for DVJournal, isn’t holding back when it comes to another Mastriano candidacy, calling on Pennsylvania Republicans to do something to dissuade the state Senator now.

“The control of the United States Senate — perhaps even the White House — could ride on Pennsylvania Republicans acting early and decisively.”

GOP consultant Christopher Nicholas agreed.

“Sen. Mastriano has demonstrated that he can win a crowded GOP primary and then run a terrible, underfunded, and losing, general election campaign. Nominating him for U. S. Senate is a sure-fire way to give Sen. Casey a free pass back to the Senate,” Nicholas said.

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I had a chance to address the New Jersey GOP last Saturday at its annual summit in Atlantic City. We discussed the issues Republicans must effectively address to win in New Jersey and nationwide. We settled on parental rights as a key issue with legs. The caveat was that all the wisdom in the world won’t matter with the wrong candidate.

This problem allowed me to talk about the importance of choosing the right candidates in Pennsylvania, particularly candidates who match the sensibilities of suburban voters. It also allowed me to reveal that in an interview on my radio show and a subsequent interview in “Politico,” Doug Mastriano revealed that he is praying with his wife about running for the Senate against U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, Jr. in 2024.

Most people at this conference couldn’t believe Mastriano would run for the Senate seat after the damage he caused. His strange and extreme campaign resulted in several Republicans losing their seats by very tiny margins. Those losses allowed Democrats to take over the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and also cost us the chance of getting voter identification on the ballot in May as a constitutional amendment that Gov. Josh Shapiro couldn’t veto. His massive loss to Shapiro also helped to defeat Dr. Oz in his Senate race against John Fetterman.

In one of his most recent interviews with me, Mastriano blamed his loss on Republicans not funding him, national Republicans not supporting him, and the advantage Democrats had by running a masterful mail-in ballot campaign. He rejected my argument that his no-exceptions policy on abortion, even in the cases of the life of the mother, rape, or incest, doomed him from the start. I told him that no candidate could run for statewide office and win in Pennsylvania if they had a no-exceptions policy on banning abortions.

Of course, after his interview with me, he latched onto a phony poll that claimed to be from Susquehanna Polling but which it immediately denied was theirs. The poll had Mastriano leading Sen. Bob Casey, and the poll claimed that abortion was no longer a key issue and inflation was a much bigger issue.

However, a new poll from Public Policy Polling is legitimate. Doug Mastriano at 42 percent leading former and potential future Senate candidate Dave McCormick came in at 28 percent. I interviewed McCormick on his new book on Monday, and he will probably run again.

Here’s the challenge the Pennsylvania GOP faces: I’m convinced that Mastriano has a firm base of support, voters who don’t care about the damage he has already done to the party. He would lose badly to Casey in the general election and greatly harm the chances of the Republican presidential candidate to carry the swing state of Pennsylvania.

The reaction of the Mastriano masses: So what? Not our problem.

When I mentioned the possibility of Mastriano being the Republican candidate on WPVI’s Inside Story last Sunday, the two Democrats told me they were praying for that outcome. If you remember, Democrats spent money on ads promoting Mastriano during the GOP gubernatorial primary because they knew he would be Shapiro’s weakest opponent.

They were right.

What needs to happen now is for Republican groups to start running ads that detail what damage the Mastriano campaign caused and how much more his nomination would cause in 2024. The control of the United States Senate — perhaps even the White House — could ride on Pennsylvania Republicans acting early and decisively.

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Former Bridgewater CEO and possible 2024 U.S. Senate hopeful Dave McCormick slammed what he said was a “decade” of bad monetary and fiscal policy from government leaders that led to recent bank meltdowns.

McCormick made the claim during a DVJournal podcast interview regarding the historic collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and the federal government’s scrambling efforts to contain the fallout.

Acknowledging that “anybody that’s predicting too much” about the crisis “probably is too confident” about the “dynamic situation,” McCormick—who is widely viewed as a likely Senate challenger to incumbent Democrat Sen. Bob Casey next year—argued there are “a set of root causes” that led to SVB’s collapse.

“We’ve had a decade or more of misguided fiscal policy and misguided monetary policy,” McCormick said. “We’ve had fiscal policy that has been enormous spending, and that spending has accelerated dramatically under Joe Biden.

“Discretionary spending has gone up by about 40 percent,” he continued. “You’ve had the three big pieces of legislation, which have added something like $18 trillion of new spending over the next 10 years, and that’s a huge driver of inflation.”

McCormick further argued that “very low interest rates” have driven financiers to adjust their spending and investment practices accordingly, driving them to “lock in long-duration treasuries and things like that in search of yield.

“And when the Fed raised rates to essentially offset the inflation that they helped create, that created a crisis at SVB because those treasuries that they held in their balance sheet went down in value,” he said. “They had to sell capital to try to close the hole, and that spooked their depositors and their depositors started to take out money.”

McCormick called the present chaos “the tip of the iceberg in terms of the problem,” one that “[won’t] go away until we get our fiscal house in order and back to our normal monetary policy.”

McCormick, who is promoting his new book “Superpower In Peril,” is increasingly being viewed as a favorite for the 2024 Senate race, with many analysts and strategists balking at the prospect of another bid by state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who lost his gubernatorial bid against Gov. Josh Shapiro last year.

However, a Public Policy Polling survey this week showed Mastriano with a sizeable lead ahead of McCormick in a potential 2024 GOP primary matchup.

Pennsylvania, welcome to the Land of Oz.

Friday, hedge fund CEO David McCormick conceded the Republican Senate primary to Dr. Mehmet Oz. Oz, the television star and cardiothoracic surgeon who had secured the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, is the Republican nominee and will face Democrat  Lt. Gov. John Fetterman in the fall.

Fewer than 1,000 votes separated Oz from McCormick and a state-mandated recount was underway. McCormick had also brought a successful court challenge to get undated ballots counted and had another one pending to have a hand recount in 12 counties.

“We spent the last 17 days making sure every Republican vote was counted,” McCormick said Friday evening. “But it’s now clear to me that with the recount largely complete, that we have a nominee. And today, I called Mehmet Oz to congratulate him on his victory.”

Dr. Oz welcomed the news.

“This evening, I received a gracious phone call from David McCormick and am tremendously grateful for his pledge of support in the fall election,” Oz said in a statement. “We share the goal of a brighter future for Pennsylvania and America. Now that our primary is over, we will make sure that this U.S. Senate seat does not fall into the hands of the radical left, led by John Fetterman. I look forward to campaigning in every corner of the Commonwealth for the next five months to earn the support of every Pennsylvanian.”

McCormick spoke to his supporters and posted the video on his Twitter feed, thanking them, his campaign team and his wife, Dina.

He promised to now lend his support to Oz’s campaign and help unite Republicans and Pennsylvanians behind his former rival.

“It’s so important that we beat John Fetterman and so important for the country that we take back the majority in the Senate in 2022,” said McCormick.

Fetterman welcomed the GOP nominee with a fundraising email mocking Oz.

“Did anyone predict that a quack celebrity TV doctor was going to run for U.S. Senate in 2022? You know, I wouldn’t believe you if you said you did. But here we are. Dr. Oz is now the *official* Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania.

“There are a lot of bad things about Dr. Oz. He’s a self-funded multi-millionaire. He’s a fraudster who made a fortune by lying to people on TV. He called Roe v. Wade ‘wrong’ and supports an extreme total ban on abortions with no exceptions for rape or incest. And look…I never thought this would be a flex, but <checks notes> I actually live in Pennsylvania!!!”

Ironically, Fetterman’s attack on heart surgeon Oz comes as his campaign faces criticism over the candidate hiding his potentially life-threatening heart condition from Democratic primary voters.

“It’s not hard to understand what’s going on here,” said CNN political analyst Chris Cillizza. “Fetterman was the leading Democrat for the state’s open Senate seat. He didn’t want his health to be a top-of-mind issue when voters went to cast their ballots. So, he and his campaign downplayed the severity of his health issues.”

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After being in the ring for months with all the candidates, countless surrogates, and many election officials, I have come to some clear conclusions about what needs to be done on the Republican side in races for the U.S. Senate and governor in Pennsylvania.

The first thing that needs to be fixed is the process for counting votes in Pennsylvania races. We have become the laughingstock of the nation. Urgency is not the watchword of the people in charge of counting votes in most counties. I realize that Pennsylvania Act 77, which paved the way for the mail-in ballot nonsense, needs to be repealed. I know that Josh Shapiro, the Democratic Party nominee for governor, would veto any attempt to rid us of this current cumbersome and possibly corrupt system.

So, we must allow counties to count mail-in ballots a few days before Election Day. But we should also tighten the deadlines that they face to get all votes counted. For example, the current deadline of getting votes counted in the recount vote process of June 7 for the May 17 primary is offensive.

Each day that goes by without a resolution weakens confidence in the validity of our elections.

Second, I believe it is time for Dave McCormick to drop all the lawsuits he has filed arguing that mail-in votes received without a date written on the envelope by the voter should be counted. I have grown to respect and like McCormick during our nearly weekly interviews over the course of the campaign. But his lawsuits following a Commonwealth court’s ruling saying that mail-in ballots without a date should be counted are playing right into the hands of people like national Democratic lawyer Marc Elias who are trying to weaken any restrictions on the counting of mail-in ballots.

I understand McCormick fought a very hard race against Dr. Oz and spent probably $10 to $12 million of his own money, but the recount should be his last action in this election. I’d like to see him named chairman of the Pennsylvania GOP and I’d like to see him become the nominee for the upcoming Senate race against Sen. Bob Casey, Jr. I believe Casey has essentially coasted on the family name and is very beatable.

It is also clear to me that election integrity is a critical issue with Pennsylvania voters. However, I don’t think the Republican nominee for governor state Sen. Doug Mastriano, is approaching it in the right way. His rantings about voting machine conspiracies and his suggestion that as governor he could overturn election results in the 2024 presidential race are not a statewide winning strategy. I like that he is talking about the importance of the Secretary of State’s Office in running elections and I’d like to hear him flesh out the types of people that he would consider for the office.

I’d also like to see Mastriano engage with more media outlets rather than just that small number that seem to amplify some of his more radical views. He refuses to come on my show–and much of talk radio in the state–apparently because he can’t any kind of challenge even from conservative hosts.

His decision to hang up the phone during an interview with DelawareValleyJournal.com is a prime example of a strategy that will fail.

The bottom line is I think Dr. Oz is the presumptive Republican nominee for the Senate and I think he can beat John Fetterman. Doug Mastriano can beat Josh Shapiro, but he must make some big–but doable–changes.

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Commonwealth Court President Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer listened to hours of arguments Tuesday on a petition brought by the David McCormick Senate campaign to permit mail-in and absentee ballots without a voter-written date on the envelope to count.

Jubelirer did not issue a ruling but promised that she would rule soon, although it’s likely the Supreme Court will have the last word.

McCormick, a hedge fund CEO, and Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity heart surgeon, are in a razor-thin Republican primary election contest with fewer than 1,000 votes separating them. However, Oz has already declared himself the presumptive nominee who will face Democrat John Fetterman in the fall.

The close race automatically triggered a statewide recount that is underway and must be completed by June 8.

Meanwhile, a senior McCormick campaign staffer said the campaign would request a hand recount for 12 counties: Allegheny, York, Centre, Chester, Cumberland, Erie, Lancaster, Monroe, Schuylkill, Delaware, Bucks, and Westmoreland.

Those counties are “outliers” with undervotes and overvotes that “fall outside the norm.” Ballotpedia defines undervotes as “when the number of choices selected by a voter in an election is less than the maximum number allowed for that election.” Overvotes are when voters cast more votes in a contest than is allowed.

“We’re going to understand with a hand-recount where any abnormalities exist,” he said. “And actually have a receipt that we can trust and verify, that I can take to my client and say, ‘These are the results.’”

They want to run hand-recount to run concurrently with the state-required recount.

“We want Republican primary voters to know they have a winner, whether it’s by one vote or a 1,000 votes, so we can all get behind the nominee and beat Fetterman in the fall,” McCormick said. “It’s just transparency. There’s an enormous lack of it.”

“We dropped from 33,000 absentee ballots outstanding to 17,000 overnight,” he said. “And there were only 1,100 votes added to the Department of State website. We’ve gone day after day after day with no reconciliation between the vote count and the vote tally.”

“And obviously, we’re winning absentees by a very big margin,” he added.

In the courtroom, McCormick’s lawyers Ron Hicks and Charles Cooper argued a federal court ruling permitting undated ballots to be counted trumps state law that requires it. However, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito issued a stay late Tuesday afternoon on that 3rd Circuit opinion, likely throwing a wrench into McCormick’s arguments.

Hicks noted Lehigh and Sullivan Counties had already included those ballots in their totals. As of Tuesday morning, 819 undated ballots were discovered, but he believes there will be more.

“These ballots matter,” Hicks said. “Clearly, this is sufficient basis for equitable relief.”

“All citizens should be allowed to vote in all elections,” said Cooper. The lack of dates on the ballots is “immaterial,” he said.

Pennsylvania Chief Deputy Attorney General Michael Fisher agreed with the McCormick camp.

However, John Gore, a lawyer representing Oz, said McCormick’s lawyers had not made their case. And even if more ballots were found, it was “not possible to overtake Dr. Oz” since some of those ballots would be for Oz and he starts with a lead of more than 900 votes.

The Republican Party is siding with Oz.

Dr. Mehmet Oz

“The law in Pennsylvania is quite clear. These undated ballots should not be counted,” said attorney Thomas King III, arguing on behalf of the Republican National Committee and the state GOP.  He said the state legislature had set the undated ballot policy and it should be upheld. To rule otherwise, the court would be taking power from the legislature, which would be “not only wrong but foolhardy.”

In his rebuttal, Cooper called his adversary’s arguments “meritless.”

As for harm to his client, “we don’t know what the gap is” since not all the votes were counted yet. He asked the court “at a minimum” to order the counties to comply with the order from the secretary of state to sequester the undated ballots. “We think it’s clear right now. It may well make a difference. These votes should be counted as a matter of law.”

Cooper asked the judge “to not disenfranchise voters.”

“The object of the election code is to allow good Pennsylvanians to vote in elections,” he said.

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Election Integrity activists have led the attack on Pennsylvania’s current voting law and, specifically, they want its validation of no-excuse absentee ballots to be eliminated.

Regardless as to whether Senate candiate Dave McCormick’s electoral challenge will salvage his political effort after a recount, his lawsuit must be supported, for it provides a shortcut to kill Act 77.

In January, the Commonwealth Court ruled Act 77 was unconstitutional, reasoning that I vigorously supported.

Yet, this issue is stuck in the PA Supreme Court, probably due to “politics” because its Democrat-majority can’t discern a cognizable method to refute these analyses.

Recently, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled it’s “immaterial” that the outside envelope of an absentee ballot be dated; its timely return could easily be validated by noting the postmark and confirming the date when it had been received by the county election officials.

This mandate is in Act 77:  “Section 1306.  Voting by Absentee Electors.–(a)  … The elector shall then fill out, date and sign the declaration printed on such envelope.”

Pivotal is its non-severability clause:  “Section 11. … If any provision of this act or its application to any person or circumstance is held invalid, the remaining provisions or applications of this act are void.”

Litigating this via the federal court precludes the ability of the Pennsylvania Supremes to be dilatory when faced with an obvious glitch in the law; it’s doubtful that the SCOTUS would intervene when the lower court had already ruled.

This is black-letter language that seemingly provides no legal wiggle-room. Thus, dumping Act 77 “ab initio” [from the date when it was signed] would invalidate non-excuse absentee voting.

Some people enjoy the convenience of mail-in voting, but they ignore the traditional reasons for functioning as citizens and the unnecessary introduction of fraud in the absence of voter/photo-ID.

This has been the cause célèbre of electoral reform advocates, for it carries profound implications.

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