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    • The Supreme Court will not stop the PA from counting some provisional ballots
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    The Supreme Court will not stop the PA from counting some provisional ballots

    Vaseline Posted on

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    The Supreme Court on Friday declined to block Pennsylvania from counting some provisional ballots in Tuesday’s election, a decision that could impact thousands of votes in the battleground state.

    The court rejected the Republican Party’s emergency request to intervene after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said voters should be able to cast provisional ballots if they failed to place an absentee ballot in the required secrecy sleeve.

    State and national Republicans argued that this would give voters “unwarranted reconsideration” for “naked ballots” or other errors in mail-in voting.

    Pennsylvania is perhaps the most important of the seven battleground states that will decide the Nov. 5 presidential election, and polls show an extremely close race.

    In a joint statement, spokespeople for the Democratic Party and Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign said Republicans have tried to make it more difficult to count votes in Pennsylvania and across the country. But the Supreme Court’s decision, according to Rosemary Boeglin and Michael Tyler, “affirms that for every eligible voter, the right to vote means the right to have your vote counted.”

    The state court decision stemmed from a dispute over two votes cast in the Democratic primary. But Republicans said that would affect how votes are counted on Tuesday.

    Justice Samuel Alito called the issue “a matter of significant importance.”

    But in a brief written response joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, Alito said that suspending the state court order — as Republicans had requested — “would not prevent the consequences they fear” because the order only applied to the two primary votes.

    Alito took no position on the validity of the Republican’s legal argument. None of the other judges offered an opinion or said how they voted.

    Provisional ballots are set aside on Election Day and counted later if officials confirm the voter’s eligibility.

    State law allows provisional ballots if the voter “has not cast another ballot at the election, including an absentee ballot.” It also states that a provisional ballot “shall not be counted if the voter’s absentee ballot or mail-in ballot is timely received by a county board of elections.”

    But if an absentee ballot is declared invalid, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court reasoned, then it was not cast or received in a timely manner.

    Republicans argued that the decision effectively rewrote election law, something only lawmakers can do.

    Democrats and voting rights groups countered that the court was merely conducting a routine interpretation of a state law that is well within the bounds of judicial review. That puts it outside the bounds of federal court involvement, they argue.

    They also said Republicans did not have the legal right to seek help from the U.S. Supreme Court because the dispute originated in the Democratic primaries. And they argued that Republicans improperly asked the court to impose new rules on the eve of elections for all of the state’s 67 county elections, even though only one was involved in the case.

    Two voters are suing the Butler County Board of Elections for rejecting their provisional ballots during the April primary after their mail-in votes were declared invalid because they lacked security covers.

    According to the ACLU of Pennsylvania, most counties in the state are allowing voters to either cast provisional ballots or correct their mail-in ballot in those circumstances.

    But a district judge upheld the board’s decision not to count the votes, saying the law puts the onus on voters to properly submit their ballots.

    Two state courts disagreed, although their decisions were not unanimous.

    The divided Pennsylvania Supreme Court said it makes no sense for lawmakers to “want to completely disenfranchise a voter because of an error with their Return Packet for no discernible purpose.”

    “The General Assembly wrote the election law for the purpose of empowering citizens to exercise their right to vote, not for the purpose of creating obstacles to voting,” Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Christine Donohue wrote for the 4-3 majority.

    Vaseline
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