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US

Rural Arizona county delays certifying midterm results as election disputes persist

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CNN
 — 

Officials in a rural Arizona county Monday delayed the certification of November’s midterm elections, missing the legal deadline and leading the Arizona secretary of state’s office to sue over the county’s failure to sign off on the results.

By a 2-1 vote Monday morning, the Republican majority on the Cochise County Board of Supervisors pushed back certification until Friday, citing concerns about voting machines. Because Monday was the deadline for all 15 Arizona counties to certify their results, Cochise’s action could put at risk the votes of some 47,000 county residents and could inject chaos into the election if those votes go uncounted.

In the lawsuit filed by the office of Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs – a Democrat who will be the state’s next governor – officials said failing to certify the election results violates state law and could “potentially disenfranchise” the county’s voters.

CNN has reached out to the supervisors for comment.

Arizona official rebuts Kari Lake’s claim about vote counting

The standoff between officials in Cochise County and the Arizona secretary of state’s office illustrates how election misinformation is continuing to stoke controversy about the 2022 results in some corners of the country even though many of the candidates who echoed former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election were defeated in November.

A crowd of grassroots activists turned up at a special meeting of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to loudly protest that county’s election administration procedures during a public comment portion of the meeting after problems with printers at voting locations on Election Day led to long lines at about a third of the county’s voting locations. In a new letter to the state attorney general’s office – which had demanded an explanation of the problems – the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office said that “no voter was disenfranchised because of the difficulty the county experienced with some of its printers.”

Disputes over the results have erupted elsewhere.

In Pennsylvania, where counties also faced a Monday deadline to certify their general election balloting, local officials have faced an onslaught of petitions demanding recounts. And officials in Luzerne County, in northeastern Pennsylvania, deadlocked Monday on whether to certify the results, according to multiple media reports. Election officials there did not respond to inquiries from CNN on Monday afternoon.

In a statement to CNN, officials with the Pennsylvania Department of State said they have reached out to Luzerne officials “to inquire about the board’s decision and their intended next steps.”

On Election Day, a paper shortage in Luzerne County prompted a court-ordered extension of in-person voting.

Arizona, another key battleground state, has long been a cauldron of election conspiracies. GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and GOP secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, both of whom pushed Trump’s lies about 2020, have refused to concede their races, as they continue to sow doubts about this year’s election results.

Kari Lake won’t commit to accepting 2022 election results

Lake’s campaign filed a lawsuit last week demanding more information from Maricopa County’s elections department about the number of voters who checked in to polling places compared to the ballots cast. And Arizona’s GOP attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh – who, like Lake and Finchem, was backed by Trump – filed a lawsuit in the state superior court in Maricopa County last week challenging the election results based on what the suit describes as errors in the management of the election.

Hamadeh is trailing his opponent Democrat Kris Mayes by 510 votes as their race heads toward a recount. But the lawsuit asks the court to issue an injunction prohibiting the Arizona secretary of state from certifying Mayes as the winner and asks the court to declare Hamadeh as the winner. A recount cannot begin until the state’s votes are certified.

Alex Gulotta, Arizona state director of All Voting is Local, said the drama over certification of the votes and the refusal by losing candidates to back down is part of an “infrastructure of election denial” that has been building since the 2020 election in Arizona.

“Those folks are going to continue to try and find fertile ground for their efforts to undermine our elections. They are not going to give up,” Gulotta said. “We had a whole slate of election deniers, many of whom were not elected.”

But their refusal to concede “was inevitable in Arizona, at least in this cycle, given the candidates. These aren’t good losers,” he added. “They said from the beginning that they would be bad losers.”

In Cochise County, the Republican officials on the county Board of Supervisors advocated for the delay, citing concerns about voting machines.

Ann English, the Democratic chairwoman, argued that there was “no reason for us to delay.”

But Republican commissioners Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd, who have cited claims that the machines were not properly certified, voted to delay signing off on the results. Monday’s action marked the second time the Republican-controlled board has delayed certification. And it marked the latest effort by Republicans on the board to register their disapproval of vote-tallying machines. Earlier this month, they attempted to mount an expansive hand count audit of the midterm results, pitting them against Cochise’s election director and the county attorney, who warned that the gambit might break the law.

State election officials said the concerns cited by the Republican majority about the vote-tallying machines are rooted in debunked conspiracy theories.

The state’s election director Kori Lorick has confirmed in writing that the voting machines had been tested and certified – a point Hobbs reiterated in Monday’s lawsuit. She is asking the court to force the board to certify the results by Thursday.

An initial deadline of December 5 had been set for statewide certification. In the lawsuit, Hobbs’ lawyers said state law does allow for a slight delay if her office has not received a county’s results, but not past December 8 – or 30 days after the election.

“Absent this Court’s intervention, the Secretary will have no choice but to complete statewide canvass by December 8 without Cochise County’s votes included,” her lawyers added.

If votes from this Republican stronghold somehow went uncounted, it could flip two races to Democrats: the contest for state superintendent and a congressional race in which Republican Juan Ciscomani already has been projected as the winner by CNN and other outlets.

In a recent opinion piece published in The Arizona Republic, two former election officials in Maricopa County – said the courts were likely to step in and force Cochise to certify the results.

But Republican Helen Purcell, a former Maricopa County recorder, and Tammy Patrick, a Democrat and the county’s former federal compliance officer, warned that “a Republican-controlled board of supervisors could end up disenfranchising their own voters and hand Democrats even more victories in the midterms.”

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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US

Clarence Thomas was ‘key’ to a plan to delay certification of 2020 election, Trump lawyers said in emails

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CNN
 — 

A lawyer for former President Donald Trump described Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as “key” to Trump’s plan to delay Congress’ certification of President Joe Biden’s victory through litigation after the 2020 election, according to emails recently turned over to the House select committee investigating January 6.

“We want to frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue” a temporary order putting Georgia’s results in doubt, Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro wrote in a December 31, 2020, email, adding that a favorable order from Thomas was their “only chance” to hold up Congress from counting electoral votes for Biden from Georgia.

John Eastman, another attorney for Trump, responded to that email saying he agreed with the plan. In the email exchanges with several other lawyers working on Trump’s legal team, they were discussing filing a lawsuit that they hoped would result in an order that “TENTATIVELY” held that Biden electoral votes from Georgia were not valid because of election fraud.

Having a case pending in front of the Supreme Court, Chesebro wrote, would be enough to prevent the Senate from counting Biden’s electors. Thomas would end up being “the key here,” Chesebro wrote, noting that Thomas is the justice assigned to dealing with emergency matters coming from the southeastern part of the country.

The email referencing Thomas was first reported by Politico. It is part of a tranche of emails the House has obtained from Eastman, under an order from a court, that are still subject of litigation before an appeals court. The emails were available through a link in a court filing submitted by the House committee early Wednesday.

US District Judge David O. Carter previously determined that the emails show evidence of potential criminal activity in Trump’s efforts to reverse his electoral loss, finding the Trump team was using litigation not to obtain court relief but to meddle with the congressional proceedings. Carter, in deciding last month that the emails should be released to the House committee, said that some of them showed evidence of obstruction of an official proceeding.

Chesebro wrote in one of the newly-available emails that that if the legal team could just get a case pending before the Supreme Court by January 5, “ideally with something positive  written by a judge or a justice, hopefully Thomas,” that it was their “best shot at holding up the count of a state in Congress.”

In a separate email Chesebro acknowledged their plans were a long shot, putting the odds of success at the Supreme Court before the January 6 congressional certification at “1%.”

But, he wrote, “a lot can happen in the 13 days left,” and having the election results of multiple states under review in the courts and in state legislatures could bolster the push to extend Congress’ debate over certifying the results.

The “public could also come away” believing the election, particularly in Wisconsin, was likely “rigged,” Chesebro wrote.

In an email two days later, Chesebro said that having Georgia “in play” on a Supreme Court filing could be “critical.” Chesebro speculated that if there was a Georgia case pending before the Supreme Court,  Vice President Mike Pence could refuse to open proceedings any of the envelopes documenting the state’s electoral votes during the January 6 proceedings.

Such a move by Pence would force the court to act on the petitions, Chesebro said. “Trump and Pence have procedural options available to them starting on January 6 that might create additional delay, and also might put pressure on the Court to act,” Chesebro wrote.

House General Counsel Doug Letter on Wednesday afternoon told the appeals court – where Eastman is still asking for help to claw back the eight emails – the inclusion of a publicly available link to the files was inadvertent.

According to the newly available emails, Trump’s lawyers were so concerned about him filing in court a signed statement asserting false election fraud claims that they worried he might be prosecuted for a crime.

Eastman raised the issue in an email on December 31, 2020, as Trump’s lawyers were planning to file in federal court to challenge the election result. Trump had made notarized verifications in the case that the facts presented were true to the best of his knowledge, but both he and his attorneys knew the data they were using in the case was misleading, according to another email.

In a recent decision, Carter said he believed the exchanges were possible evidence of a fraudulent scheme after the 2020 election. Though he described this set of emails in an order last month, the full text of the exchanges is now available.

“Although the President signed a verification for that back on Dec. 1, he has since been made aware that some of the allegations (and evidence proffered by the experts) has been inaccurate,” Eastman wrote to two other lawyers on December 31, 2020. “For him to sign a new verification with that knowledge (and incorporation by reference) would not be accurate. And I have no doubt that an aggressive DA or US Atty someplace would go after both the President and his lawyers once all the dust settles on this.”

Eastman also wrote that a White House adviser and lawyer, Eric Herschmann, had “concern about the President signing a verification when specific numbers were included” regarding votes cast. He was specifically concerned about numbers that implied that felons, dead people and people who had moved had voted improperly, another Eastman email showed.

At the time that the lawyers were in discussions, Trump was in flight, returning to the White House, and was set to consult with Herschmann about signing the verification, another December 31 email from Eastman said.

“I’m going to work with Eric in advance to get it all cleared,” Eastman wrote.

He and other private attorneys then discussed changing the verification for Trump to sign. But there was no notary around the White House to witness Trump’s signing until after the new year, the emails show. “Presidential trip to a UPS store?” another lawyer, Christopher Gardner wrote.

Elections lawyers Cleta Mitchell and Alex Kaufman then suggested using a notary over zoom – instead of having Trump sign the document with the language “under penalty of perjury,” according to the emails.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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World

Brazil election: Voting starts in contest marred by violence and fear

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São Paulo, Brazil
CNN
 — 

Polls opened in Brazil on Sunday in a presidential election marred by an unprecedented climate of tension and violence.

While there are nearly a dozen candidates on the ballot, the race has been dominated by two frontrunners and polar opposites: right-wing incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro and leftist former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, leader of the Workers’ Party.

Both have been seen on the campaign trail flanked by security and police, even wearing bulletproof vests at times. Bolsonaro wore his as he kicked off his re-election bid last month in the city of Juiz de Fora, where he was stabbed in the stomach during his 2018 presidential campaign. Da Silva, who is commonly referred to as Lula, was seen also wearing a vest during an event in Rio de Janeiro, the same city where a homemade stink bomb was launched into a large crowd of his supporters back in July.

After voting alongside his wife Rosangela da Silva at a Sao Paulo school on Sunday, Lula told reporters: “We don’t want more discord, we want a country that lives in peace. This is the most important election. I am really happy.”

He also referenced the 2018 elections, where he had been unable to run – or vote – because of a corruption conviction, which was overturned last year.

“Four years ago I couldn’t vote because I had been the victim of a lie in this country. And four years later, I’m here, voting with the recognition of my total freedom and with the possibility of being president of the republic of this country again, to try to make this country return to normality,” Lula said.

Bolsonaro, who voted at a military facility in Rio de Janeiro told reporters that he had traveled to “practically every state in Brazil” over the 45 days of campaigning.

“The expectation is of victory today,” he said, later adding: “Clean elections, no problem at all.”

Voting began at 8 a.m. in Brasilia (7 a.m. ET) and concludes at 5 p.m. local (4 p.m. ET). More than 156 million Brazilians are eligible to vote.

In the Brazilian electoral system, a winning candidate must gain more than 50% of the vote. If no candidate crosses that threshold, a second round of voting between the two frontrunners will take place on October 30.

Voters are also electing new state governors, senators, federal and state deputies for the country’s 26 states and the federal district.

Bolsonaro, 67, is running for re-election under the conservative Liberal Party. He has campaigned to increase mining, privatize public companies and generate more sustainable energy to bring down energy prices. He has vowed to continue paying a R$ 600 (roughly US$110) monthly benefit known as Auxilio Brasil.

Often referred to as the “Trump of the Tropics,” Bolsonaro, who is supported by important evangelical leaders, is a highly polarizing figure. His government is known for its support for ruthless exploitation of land in the Amazon, leading to record deforestation figures. Environmentalists are warning that the future of the rainforest could be at stake in this election.

Bolsonaro has also been widely criticized for his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. More than 686,000 people in Brazil have died from the virus.

Lula, 76, who was president for two consecutive terms, from 2003 to 2011, has focused his campaign on getting Bolsonaro out of office and has highlighted his past achievements throughout his campaign.

He left office with a 90% approval rating in 2011, and is largely credited for lifting millions of Brazilians from extreme poverty through the “Bolsa Familia” welfare program.

His campaign has promised a new tax regime that will allow for higher public spending. He has vowed to end hunger in the country, which has returned during the Bolsonaro government. Lula also promises to work to reduce carbon emissions and deforestation in the Amazon.

Lula, however, is also no stranger to controversy. He was convicted for corruption and money laundering in 2017, on charges stemming from the wide-ranging “Operation Car Wash” investigation into the state-run oil company Petrobras. But after serving less than two years, a Supreme Court Justice annulled Lula’s conviction in March 2021, clearing the way for him to run for president for a sixth time.

Vote counting begins right after ballots, which are mostly electronic, close on Sunday.

Electoral authorities say they expect final results from the first round to be officially announced Sunday evening. In the last few elections, results were officially declared two to three hours after voting finished.

Observers will be watching closely to see if all candidates publicly accept the result.

Bolsonaro, who has been accused of firing up supporters with violent rhetoric, has sought to sow doubts about the result and said that the results should be considered suspicious if he doesn’t gain “at least 60%.”

On Saturday, he repeated claims that he will win in the first round of presidential elections “with a margin higher than 60%,” despite being 14 points behind in the most recent poll that day.

When asked on Sunday if he will accept the results of the election, Bolsonaro said, “If they are clean elections, no problem, may the best win.”

Both Bolsonaro and his conservative Liberal Party have claimed that Brazil’s electronic ballot system is susceptible to fraud – an entirely unfounded allegation that has drawn comparisons to the false election claims of former US President Donald Trump.

There have been no proven instances of voter fraud in the electronic ballot in Brazil.

The Supreme Electoral Court has also rejected claims of flaws in the system, as “false and untruthful, with no base in reality.”

Critics have warned that such talk could lead to outbreaks of violence or even refusal to accept the election result among some Brazilians – pointing to the January 6, 2021, riot incited by Trump after he lost the vote.

There have already been several reports of political discourse turning violent from supporters across the political spectrum.

Last weekend, police registered two fatal incidents in states on opposite ends of the country. In the northeastern state of Ceara, a man was stabbed to death in a bar after identifying himself as a Lula supporter, according to police. And authorities in southern Santa Catarina state say a man wearing a Bolsonaro T-shirt was also fatally stabbed during a violent discussion with a man whom witnesses identified as a Workers’ Party supporter.

Police say they are investigating both incidents, and that arrests have been made.

And in July, a member of Lula’s Worker’s Party, who was celebrating his 50th birthday with a politically-themed party was shot dead.

Just one day before, two explosives were thrown into a crowd at a Lula rally.

According to a Datafolha poll conducted in August, more than 67% of voters in Brazil are afraid of being “physically attacked” due to their political affiliations. And the country’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal has issued a ban on firearms within 100 meters (330 feet) of any polling station on election day.

The fear factor among voters could lead to a number of abstentions on Sunday, however, recent polling shows that there are fewer undecided Brazilians this year than in previous elections.

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US

Trump defends ‘great woman’ Ginni Thomas after Jan. 6 testimony

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CNN
 — 

Former President Donald Trump praised the “courage and strength” of Ginni Thomas at a rally Saturday, days after the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas met with congressional investigators about her efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

In a four-and-a-half hour meeting with investigators on Thursday, Thomas discussed her marriage to the conservative justice, claiming in an opening statement obtained by CNN that she “did not speak with him at all about the details of my volunteer campaign activities.”

Thomas, who attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, 2021 landed on the radar of the House select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol after text message exchanges she had with then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about election fraud claims surfaced during the ongoing congressional probe.

Thomas had “significant concerns about fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election. And, as she told the Committee, her minimal and mainstream activity focused on ensuring that reports of fraud and irregularities were investigated,” her attorney Mark Paoletta said after her closed-door testimony.

During a campaign appearance in Michigan, Trump claimed that Thomas told the House panel “she still believes the 2020 election was stolen,” commending her because “she didn’t wilt under pressure.”

“Do you know Ginni Thomas?” the former President polled the crowd. “She didn’t say, ‘Oh, well I’d like not to get involved. Of course, it was a wonderful election.’ It was a rigged and stolen election. She didn’t wait and sit around and say, ‘Well let me give you maybe a different answer than [what] I’ve been saying for the last two years.’”

“No, no,” Trump continued, “She didn’t wilt under pressure like so many others that are weak people and stupid people… She said what she thought, she said what she believed in.”

Thomas, who has previously criticized the House probe into January 6, has long been a prominent fixture in conservative activism – even becoming a persistent annoyance to some Trump White House officials as she tried to install friends and allies into senior administration roles throughout his presidency. She and her husband attended a private lunch with Trump and his wife Melania at the White House shortly after the 2018 midterms, though CNN has previously reported that her direct interactions with the former President were fairly limited beyond that meeting.

But on Saturday, Trump praised Thomas as “a great woman,” comparing her to countless former aides and allies who have admitted in their own depositions with the House panel that they themselves didn’t believe Trump’s claims about voter fraud following the 2020 election.

Thomas said she “never spoke” with her husband about “any of the legal challenges to the 2020 election,” addressing ethical questions that were raised in the wake a Supreme Court ruling last year on a January 6-related case. Thomas and Meadows texted repeatedly about overturning the election results.

Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chairs the committee, said that Thomas did confirm during her testimony that she still believes the election was stolen, adding that “at this point we are glad she came in.”

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US

Mark Finchem: Arizona GOP secretary of state nominee stands by election conspiracy theories in debate

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CNN
 — 

Arizona Republican secretary of state nominee Mark Finchem doubled down on the conspiracy theories that he has espoused about the 2020 presidential election in a debate against Democrat Adrian Fontes Thursday night, asserting that the votes in several key Arizona counties should have been “set aside” even though there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 contest.

“There are certain counties that should have been set aside as irredeemably compromised – Maricopa County was one of them. Yuma County was one of them,” the Republican state lawmaker said, echoing claims he made in a February resolution that called for decertifying the 2020 election results in three Arizona counties – even though legal experts say there is no legal mechanism to do so. “We have so many votes outside of the law that it begs the question, what do we do with an election where we have votes that are in the stream, which should not be counted?”

Finchem, a Republican state representative in Arizona, was endorsed by Donald Trump in September of 2021 after becoming one of the most vocal supporters of the former President’s lies about the 2020 presidential election. Trump is supporting a broad array of election deniers vying for office in November as he continues his unrelenting campaign to undermine and subvert the 2020 results.

Finchem is one of at least 11 Republican nominees running for state elections chief who have questioned, rejected or tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election, as CNN’s Daniel Dale chronicled last month – a trend that has alarmed election experts and increasingly drawn the notice of the public.

His assertions Thursday evening – which he made when a moderator asked him whether he would have certified the 2020 presidential results – drew a sharp rebuke from Fontes, the Democratic nominee for secretary of state, who said Finchem had just outlined why it would be so dangerous for him to be charged with managing and overseeing Arizona’s election systems.

“Our democracy really rests on the decisions (of) thousands of people – Republicans and Democrats alike – who did the work of elections. When we have conspiracy theories and lies like the ones Mr. Finchem has just shared, based in no real evidence, what we end up doing is eroding the faith that we have in each other as citizens,” said Fontes, who previously served as the recorder of Maricopa County. “The kind of divisiveness, not based in fact, not based on any evidence, that we’ve seen trumpeted by Mr. Finchem is dangerous for America.”

Fontes was elected recorder of Maricopa County in 2016 but was defeated in his reelection bid in 2020 after facing criticism for some of the changes he made to the county’s voting systems. Finchem repeatedly criticized his performance in the recorder’s office Thursday night.

In a Quinnipiac University poll released last month, 67% of Americans said they believed the nation’s democracy is “in danger of collapse,” a 9-point increase from January.

As Trump considers another run for the White House, Finchem’s close alliance with the former President has drawn close scrutiny because he would be charged with managing and certifying the election results of the 2024 presidential election in a pivotal swing state that President Joe Biden won by less than 11,000 votes.

The office he is seeking is also critically important in another respect because in Arizona, the secretary of state is second in line to the governorship.

Finchem co-sponsored legislation with fellow Republican lawmakers in Arizona that would allow lawmakers to reject election results and require election workers to hand-count ballots instead of using electronic equipment to tabulate results. He has also asserted without evidence that early voting leads to election fraud and has questioned whether it is constitutional.

During the 30-minute debate, which was sponsored by the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission and aired on Arizona’s PBS channel, Fontes, a former Marine, repeatedly tried to get Finchem to answer for some of the ideas that he has proposed as a legislator like curtailing the ability to vote by mail.

Finchem resisted, arguing that the secretary of state does not set policy: “The secretary of state doesn’t eliminate people’s ability to vote. That’s up to the legislature,” he said.

When a moderator interjected and pressed Finchem to answer whether he wanted to eliminate mail-in voting, Finchem replied: “What I want doesn’t matter.”

He later allowed that he doesn’t “care for mail-in-voting. That’s why I go to the polls.” The Republican lawmaker said he supports “absentee vote” programs, but not programs where ballots are sent to voters who have not requested them.

When one of the moderators asked Finchem whether the August primary election was fair, Finchem responded that he had “no idea.” When the moderator followed up by asking Finchem what had changed between the 2020 presidential election and the 2022 Arizona primary, Finchem replied: “The candidates.”

When asked what role the federal government has in Arizona’s elections, Finchem said he believes the federal government “needs to butt out,” adding that it should be the legislature “who names the time, place and manner of an election, not the federal government.”

Fontes tried to draw out Finchem on some of his controversial associations – including that he is a self-proclaimed member of the far-right extremist group known as the Oath Keepers – but the Republican lawmaker did not engage.

CNN’s KFile team has uncovered a series of posts from Finchem where he shared anti-government conspiracy theories, including a Pinterest account with a “Treason Watch List” (which included photos of Democratic politicians) and pins of photos of Barack Obama beside imagery of a man in Nazi attire making a Nazi salute.

Fontes also pressed Finchem to explain what he was doing in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021.

Finchem attended the January 6 rally that preceded the storming of the US Capitol – though he has said he did not participate in the riot. Around that time, the Arizona Republic reported that he posted a photo online of rioters on the steps of the Capitol and said the events were “what happens when the People feel they have been ignored, and Congress refuses to acknowledge rampant fraud.”

Fontes accused him of engaging in “a violent insurrection” that attempted to “overturn the very constitution that holds this nation together.”

Finchem rejected that characterization. “Mr. Fontes has just engaged in total fiction, the creation of something that did not exist,” he said. “I was interviewed by the (Department of Justice) and the (January 6) commission as a witness. … For him to assert I was part of a criminal uprising is absurd and frankly, it is a lie.”

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US

PA Primary: Mehmet Oz, Dave McCormick neck and neck in Pennsylvania’s GOP Senate contest ; Kathy Barnette trails by 76,000 votes

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NEWTOWN, Pennsylvania (WPVI) — The night’s most closely watched race in Pennsylvania’s GOP Senate contest is still too close to call.

Election Results: Live updates on Pennsylvania primary races

Celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz and former hedge fund executive Dave McCormick are neck and neck. Political commentator Kathy Barnette trails behind by more than 76,000 votes.

As of 11 p.m. with 99% of the estimated vote counted, McCormick led by 337,797 votes while Oz held 335,314 votes. Barnette had 261,299 total votes.

The auto recount trigger in Pennsylvania for a statewide race is a margin of

The winner will face Democratic challenger John Fetterman who won his party’s nomination days after suffering a stroke.

“We’re not gonna have a result tonight,” Oz said shortly before midnight, before vowing to Trump, “I will make you proud.”

Oz had been locked in an expensive battle with McCormick. But Barnette, who has drawn the support of Trump backers suspicious of Oz’s ideological shifts, stunned the political world with a late surge that upended the race in the final weeks as she tries to become the first Black Republican woman elected to the Senate.

Barnette, who voted in Huntingdon Valley on Tuesday morning, has repeated false claims the 2020 election was stolen.

In recent days, pictures have emerged of Barnette apparently marching near members of the Proud Boys on January 6, 2021. ABC News has verified the images that were first shared by an independent researcher.

She denied any connection to the Proud Boys to another network.

Copyright © 2022 WPVI-TV. All Rights Reserved.



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US

Rep. Scott Perry played role in Trump contesting election

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The New York Times is reporting Susquehanna Valley congressman Scott Perry played a significant role in persuading then-President Donald Trump to contest the results of the 2020 election. The NYT cites an unnamed source who told its reporters, Rep. Perry introduced President Trump to former U.S. Justice Department Official Jeffery Clark, who was sympathetic to Trump’s claims that the election was stolen.The source also claimed that Perry and Clark planned to have the Justice Department send a letter to Georgia to investigate the possibility of voter fraud in states’ election results. The report goes on to state, acting Attorney General Jeffery Rosen refused to send that letter. Pennsylvania’s Attorney General Josh Shapiro has reacted to the article on Twitter saying: “Representative Perry ought to familiarize himself with Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of our Constitution. There must be consequences for this conduct.”A fellow Pennsylvanian in the state house, Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta has released a statement calling on Perry to resign saying, “Scott Perry, this is not your first time being a national embarrassment but make it your last – resign.”On Sunday, the Pennsylvania Democratic Party Chairwoman Nancy Patton Mills released the following statement on the PA Dems. website. “Scott Perry has disgraced South Central Pennsylvania, failed his country, and betrayed the trust of anyone who cares about our democracy. He is a stain on our Congress and must resign immediately.””If he fails to do so, Leader McCarthy must remove him from his committee assignments, and the NRCC and PA GOP must formally refuse to spend on his behalf.” WGAL News 8 has reached out to Rep. Perry’s office for comment and has not heard back.

The New York Times is reporting Susquehanna Valley congressman Scott Perry played a significant role in persuading then-President Donald Trump to contest the results of the 2020 election.

The NYT cites an unnamed source who told its reporters, Rep. Perry introduced President Trump to former U.S. Justice Department Official Jeffery Clark, who was sympathetic to Trump’s claims that the election was stolen.

The source also claimed that Perry and Clark planned to have the Justice Department send a letter to Georgia to investigate the possibility of voter fraud in states’ election results.

The report goes on to state, acting Attorney General Jeffery Rosen refused to send that letter.

Pennsylvania’s Attorney General Josh Shapiro has reacted to the article on Twitter saying: “Representative Perry ought to familiarize himself with Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of our Constitution. There must be consequences for this conduct.”

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A fellow Pennsylvanian in the state house, Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta has released a statement calling on Perry to resign saying, “Scott Perry, this is not your first time being a national embarrassment but make it your last – resign.”

On Sunday, the Pennsylvania Democratic Party Chairwoman Nancy Patton Mills released the following statement on the PA Dems. website.

“Scott Perry has disgraced South Central Pennsylvania, failed his country, and betrayed the trust of anyone who cares about our democracy. He is a stain on our Congress and must resign immediately.”

“If he fails to do so, Leader McCarthy must remove him from his committee assignments, and the NRCC and PA GOP must formally refuse to spend on his behalf.”

WGAL News 8 has reached out to Rep. Perry’s office for comment and has not heard back.



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