Primaries 2022 election day live: Trump rages as Dr Oz struggles in PA and Madison

Former President Donald Trump blasted Pennsylvania’s elections procedures on social media on Wednesday, even though there are no indications of any wrongdoing with those ballots other than a printing error that was slowing the tally in one county.

He has relentlessly criticised the state’s voting procedures since his loss in Pennsylvania two years ago when it took several days to tally the results from all mailed ballots.

Here’s an explainer on how the state’s mailed ballot system works and what is causing the delay:

Doug Mastriano spent the months after the 2020 presidential election demanding an audit of results and amplifying Trump’s lie that his loss was due to fraudulent outcomes.

Last night Mastriano declared victory almost immediately after news networks predicted his GOP primary win for Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial race, relying on the same electoral process that saw Trump lose two years ago.

Why do Mastriano and all the other previous deniers who won their races now believe the election process is fair?

The governor in Pennsylvania appoints the secretary of state, an immensely powerful position that runs the state’s elections and signs off on electors.

The former president baselessly suggested that his preferred candidate Dr Oz simply declare himself the winner in the Pennsylvania GOP Senate primary, and falsely claimed election officials are “unable” to count ballots – keeping up his bogus narrative that elections, if they don’t go his way, are rigged against him, throwing a wrench into the democratic process.

Far-right candidate Kathy Barnette, who is trailing in third in the Republican Senate primary in Pennsylvania, is blaming her finish on Fox News host Sean Hannity.

In a video posted to her Twitter account early on Wednesday morning, she thanked her supporters and attacked the Fox personality.

She said: “I do want to say: never forget what Sean Hannity did in this race. Almost single-handedly, Sean Hannity sowed seeds of disinformation, flat-out lies every night for the past five days. And that was just extremely hard to overcome, apparently”.

Dr Oz and Dave McCormick are just a few tenths of one percentage point apart in the Republican primary for a US Senate seat in Pennsylvania.

It may be several days or weeks to determine who won the race, with several thousand mail-in or absentee ballots left to be counted and processed.

Thousands of printing errors involving mail-in ballots from Lancaster County must also be manually remarked, with a team of 50 volunteers and county employees working with election administrators.

The errors impacted about 16,000 of 22,000 mail-in ballots that were returned.

Once all ballots counted, the race is likely headed to a recount, if the men can’t escape the .5 per cent threshold that separtes them. That threshold triggers an automatic recount, under state law. That process would have to start by 1 June and end no later than 7 June.

Then, of course, the winner in the GOP primary will face John Fetterman, who won every county in the state in the Democratic primary. That general election will put the GOP candidate against Fetterman on 8 November.

The midterms are still months away, but Tuesday night was proof that the GOP is getting very good at shooting itself in the foot, writes Nathan McDermott:

Illinois Republican congressman and Trump critic called the loss of the former president’s pick in North Carolina “good for the country.”

“It’s good for the party. It’s good for the 11th District of North Carolina,” he told CNN.

“DC has become kind of a growing ground for people that are just more interested in fame than governing, that are more interested in becoming famous than in actually doing the really serious work, at a time when we have a lot of challenges here at home and a lot of challenges overseas.”

Kinzinger is notably not running for re-election. He joins Liz Cheney as the only two Republican House members on the congressional committee investigating the Capitol attack. Both of them are routinely attacked by far-right members of their party.

What was the vibe like at the auto detail shop/campaign party as Madison Cawthorn’s re-election bid came crashing down?

The Independent’s John Bowden was there. He got kicked out.

Dr Oz and Dave McCormick are just a few tenths of one percentage point apart in the Republican primary for a US Senate seat in Pennsylvania.

It may be several days or weeks to determine who won the race, with several thousand mail-in or absentee ballots left to be counted and processed.

Thousands of printing errors involving mail-in ballots from Lancaster County must also be manually remarked, with a team of 50 volunteers and county employees working with election administrators.

The errors impacted about 16,000 of 22,000 mail-in ballots that were returned.

Once all ballots counted, the race is likely headed to a recount, if the men can’t escape the .5 per cent threshold that separtes them. That threshold triggers an automatic recount, under state law. That process would have to start by 1 June and end no later than 7 June.

Then, of course, the winner in the GOP primary will face John Fetterman, who won every county in the state in the Democratic primary. That general election will put the GOP candidate against Fetterman on 8 November.

The daytime television personality who millions of Americans have turned to for wellness advice made a surprising turn into Pennsylvania politics last year.

Now he’s the possible Republican nominee in a Senate race in a midterm election that could determine the balance of power in Congress.