Supreme Court Faces Urgent Republican Request on Pennsylvania Ballots
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court has been approached by Republicans seeking an emergency intervention in Pennsylvania concerning provisional ballots, a move that could potentially leave thousands of votes uncounted in this critical swing state.
With the election just over a week away, the focal point of this legal dispute is the provisional ballots cast by those Pennsylvania voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected due to technical non-compliance with state procedures.
A recent decision by Pennsylvania’s highest court, which passed with a 4-3 majority, mandates that election officials count provisional ballots from voters whose mail-in ballots were invalidated for lacking the required secrecy envelopes.
This legal matter reached the Supreme Court concurrently with Virginia’s request for the court’s intervention in a separate issue related to the purging of voter registrations.
Previously, the Supreme Court had been involved in adjudicating pandemic-related voting rule changes in several states, including Pennsylvania, four years ago.
The Republicans, in their submission to the Supreme Court, sought an order to either pause the state court’s decision or, alternatively, to ensure that the provisional ballots are kept separate and not included in the official tally while the litigation is ongoing.
Their argument hinges on the premise that state legislation does not provide a mechanism for voters to correct mistakes on mail-in ballots.
Secrecy envelopes serve to keep ballots anonymous as election officials open the outer stamped envelopes used for mailing. Voters must also endorse and date these outer envelopes. To date, Pennsylvania voters have requested 2 million mail-in ballots.
The dispute gained further prominence when two voters from Butler County, Pennsylvania, initiated a lawsuit after their provisional ballots were rejected by the local election board upon noticing issues with their mailed ballots.
The decisions by election officials were upheld by a county judge.
The rules governing mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania underwent significant changes with a 2019 law, which vastly expanded their use, leading to multiple legal challenges.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, most counties inform voters ahead of Election Day if their mail-in ballot is subject to rejection, thus allowing them to cast a provisional ballot at their polling station, though this practice is not uniformly applied across all counties.
