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The Supreme Court won't stop PA from counting some provisional ballots

Posted on by Kennedy
The Supreme Court won't stop PA from counting some provisional ballots

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The Supreme Court declined Friday to block Pennsylvania from counting some provisional ballots in Tuesday's election, a decision that could potentially affect 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 a mail-in ballot in the required secrecy envelope.

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

Pennsylvania is arguably 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 team said Republicans sought to complicate the counting of votes in Pennsylvania and across the country. But the Supreme Court's decision, according to Rosemary Boeglin and Michael Tyler, “confirms that the right to vote means every eligible voter's right to have his or her vote counted.”

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

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

But in a brief written comment joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, Alito said that suspending the state court's order — as Republicans demanded — “would not prevent the consequences they fear” because of the order only applied to the two area codes.

Alito did not comment on the validity of the Republicans' legal argument. None of the other justices commented or said how they voted.

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

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

But if a mail-in ballot is invalid, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court argued, then it wasn't cast or wasn't received on time.

Republicans argued that the decision effectively rewritten the right to vote, something only the legislature could do.

Democrats and voting rights groups countered that the court was simply making a routine interpretation of a state law that was well within the bounds of judicial review. That's outside the bounds of federal court involvement, they argue.

They also said Republicans did not have the legal right to ask the U.S. Supreme Court for help because the dispute originated in the Democratic primary. And they argued that Republicans had wrongly asked the court to impose new rules for all 67 state election boards just before the election, even though only one was involved in the case.

Two voters sued the Butler County Board of Elections for rejecting their provisional ballots in the April primary election after their absentee ballots were invalidated due to missing security envelopes.

According to the ACLU of Pennsylvania, most counties in the state allow voters to either cast provisional ballots or correct their absentee ballot in this case.

But a district judge upheld the panel's decision not to count the votes, saying the law placed the responsibility on voters to properly submit their ballots.

Two state appeals courts disagreed, but their decisions were not unanimous.

The divided Pennsylvania Supreme Court said it made no sense for the legislature to “seek to completely disenfranchise a voter based on an error in his return package without any apparent purpose.”

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

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