U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Republican Party’s Effort to Block Provisional Ballots for Pennsylvania Residents That Screws Up Voting by Mail

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday unanimously rejected a Republican request to ban Pennsylvania voters who submitted incorrect ballots from casting provisional votes in the election on Election Day — a decision seen as a victory for Democrats in the battleground state .

But in rejecting a last-minute appeal from the Republican National Committee and the Republican Party, three of the court’s Republican justices — Samuel A. Alito Jr., Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch — described the issue as “a of considerable importance”. and appeared to leave the door open for future post-election lawsuits.

At issue was a 4-3 decision last week by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that allowed voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected due to procedural errors such as missing dates or failure to use a required security envelope to vote at the polls.

The case stemmed from Butler County, which had a policy of rejecting those provisional votes. It was part of a broader set of lawsuits that have determined which votes will be counted in Pennsylvania’s elections.

Separately Friday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court blocked a lower court ruling That added to the confusion in the debate over whether election officials should count undated mail-in ballots. Instead, it’s a doubling down on an earlier statement on the issue that at least this shouldn’t happen this year.

Tens of thousands of ballots are rejected every election because of such voter errors. And in a state like Pennsylvania, where this year’s presidential race is likely to yield an incredibly close margin, the fate of voters’ ability to cast a provisional ballot if they made a mistake could end up being significant.

Democrats are much more likely to vote by mail than Republicans.

Republicans, in their appeal of the Butler County case, accused the state’s highest court of rewriting election law. They urged the U.S. Supreme Court justices to set aside all provisional ballots from voters whose ballots had previously been rejected until further lawsuits could be resolved.

Democrats and voting rights groups argued that halting the ruling would only create confusion, create problems for election administrators and, worse, potentially disenfranchise thousands of voters who would otherwise be eligible.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court justices ultimately decided to uphold the state court ruling, Alito and his Republican colleagues showed some willingness to address the issue in the future. But they described the current case as an inappropriate vehicle for that debate.

“Because the only state election officials who are parties in this case are the members of the board of elections in a small county,” they wrote, “we cannot direct other election boards to seize the ballots at issue.”

In a statement after the ruling, RNC spokesperson Claire Zunk praised the party’s victories in other cases in Pennsylvania including a ruling forcing Bucks County to extend on-demand voting by mail for three days.

“While we are disappointed in the Supreme Court’s ruling, we won three major election integrity victories in Pennsylvania this week,” she said.

But Witold Walczak — legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, which advocated for the inclusion of provisional ballots — called it a victory for voting rights.

“A minor error that is irrelevant to a person’s eligibility to vote should never disrupt ballot counting, and provisional ballots are a decades-old fail-safe — a backup for voters,” he said. “We are grateful that the RNC’s argument has failed and that voters can count on provisional ballots as a way to ensure their vote counts.”