Oct. 28 (UPI) — The Republican National Committee asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to intervene in a case centered on Pennsylvania election officials counting provisional ballots, urging the high court to prevent them from doing so.
Last week, a divided Supreme Court of Pennsylvania issued a 4-3 ruling against the Republican effort to prevent provisional ballots in the battleground state from being counted when their original mail-in ballots were disqualified for lacking a signature, date or secrecy envelope.
In their appeal to the justices on Monday, the RNC argued that the state’s high court had erred by changing the rules governing mail-in voting, and, in doing so, violated the Constitution by overriding the state’s legislature.
“This case is of paramount public importance, potentially affecting tens of thousands of votes in a State which many anticipate could be decisive in control of the U.S. Senate or even the 2024 Presidential election,” the RNC said in its appeal.
The case was originally filed in April by two voters whose provisional ballots were rejected by the Butler County Board of Elections after their original mail-in ballots were disqualified for missing the inner secrecy envelope.
According to the commonwealth’s website, a provisional ballot records a vote while the county board of elections determines whether it can be counted. The website states a provisional ballot can be cast if a voter “returned a completed absentee or mail‐in ballot that was rejected, or you believe will be rejected, by the county board of elections and you believe you are eligible to vote.”
The lawsuit made its way to the state’s high court last week after the RNC and the Pennsylvania GOP appealed a lower court’s September decision that found Butler County officials were required to count the provisional votes.
Last week, in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania’s order, the divided bench ruled that provisional votes cast by those who made an error in their initial mail-in ballot should be counted. To discard the votes “is not reconcilable with the right of franchise,” the court said.
“While appellants and their amici argue that ‘election integrity’ mandates that electors’ provisional ballots not be counted, we are at a loss to identify what honest voting principle is violated by recognizing the validity of one ballot cast by one voter,” the court ruled.
In their appeal on Monday, the RNC argued that the state court had created a “cure process for mail-ballot errors,” which the GOP said the commonwealth’s General Assembly deliberately chose not to do.
“When the legislature says that certain ballots can never be counted, a state court cannot blue-pencil that clear command into always,” the RCN said in its filing.
The litigation comes as the GOP has been seeking to prevent the counting of some votes via lawsuits ahead of Nov. 5’s presidential election.
Earlier Monday, Republican Virginia election officials also asked the Supreme Court justices to reinstatement Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s voter purge after a federal appeals court on Sunday ruled against it.
Some 1,600 people were removed from Virginia’s voter rolls in August. Opponents accused Youngkin of targeting naturalized citizens. The court ruled neither the judges nor the parties involved in the legislation knew if those expunged from the voter rolls were non-citizens, with at least some being known eligible voters.
