Running down the recount and what’s next | Election Newsletter

Of all the scenarios we considered over more than a year covering this Senate race, this one wasn’t on the list.

The recount in the primary between Mehmet Oz and David McCormick got going in earnest this week, with county elections officials going about the painstaking work of re-tabulating results and making final decisions about how to count any ballots whose markings — like a half-filled bubble — might have tripped up a machine.

We won’t get final results until next week, but here’s what to expect as the process plays out, with a big help from our expert colleagues Jonathan Lai (on election administration) and Jeremy Roebuck (on the legal battle).

What’s the starting point?

The initial count found Oz leading McCormick by a little less than 1,000 votes, out of more than 1.3 million cast — less than one-tenth of one percentage point. It’s rare for a recount to change the initial result. But it’s also rare to have such a close contest, and recounts do often find minor counting errors (errors, not fraud) in the initial tally. Usually those blips are far too small to have any effect on the outcomes — but in this case, it wouldn’t take much to flip the result.