The recent Republican primary election in Pennsylvania was a nail-biter, as the race for one of the state’s Senate seats came down to candidates David McCormick and celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz.

The race was so close, in fact, that it triggered a number of legal maneuvers from McCormick’s side, as his legal team petitioned the state’s Supreme Court to rule in favor of compelling election officials to count a number of undated ballots, but on Saturday, McCormick received bad news.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected his appeal to force election officials to count the undated ballots, the Washington Examiner reported, which could have brought the race to even thinner margins.

NEW: Pennsylvania Supreme Court dismisses GOP appeal in undated ballot case. Importantly, the court DENIES Republican motion to vacate the lower court decision.https://t.co/QXYcHcon1X pic.twitter.com/y0w3h5XUIr

— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) June 11, 2022

McCormick had already conceded the race to Oz, who had the backing of former President Donald Trump, Fox News’s Sean Hannity, who promoted Oz nearly every night in the lead-up to the race, and other powerful figures on the right.

Because the race was so close, an automatic state recount was triggered. When it was all said and done, Oz won the primary by an astonishing 951 votes.

The state’s high court ruling with regard to counting undated ballots comes on the heels of a U.S. Supreme Court decision on Friday in a Pennsylvania case stemming from a 2021 judicial election, with GOP candidate David Ritter having argued that undated ballots should not have counted in his race.

A lower court allowed undated ballots to be counted, and SCOTUS upheld the lower court’s ruling in a 6–3 decision announced on Friday.

Many believe that the ruling will have major implications for future elections in the state, with the first test coming in the November midterms.