On Friday, the Supreme Court upheld a state court ruling that allowed certain provisional ballots to be recounted, in a major setback for the state Republican Party and the Republican National Committee just four days before the election.
The Republican National Committee and the state GOP filed an emergency appeal with the nation’s highest court last week seeking to temporarily halt a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that ordered the state to count voters whose provisional ballots had been filled out incorrectly or They were missing an internal “secret.” ” about.
GOP lawyers urged the Supreme Court to grant a full stay of the state’s decision, writing in a final response brief filed Thursday night that such an order would “prevent multiple forms” of “irreparable harm” to the state. .
At a minimum, the court was urged to grant a “segregation order” to allow the ballots to be set aside and counted separately.
“The actual provisional ballots contain no identifying information, just one vote,” GOP lawyers wrote. “Once ballots are separated from their outer envelopes, there is no way to retroactively determine which tickets were issued illegally. In other words, once an egg is scrambled, it cannot be unscrambled.”
THE 1.6 MILLION VOTERS WHO COULD DETERMINE ELECTIONS IN THE US DO NOT CURRENTLY RESIDENCE IN THE COUNTRY
A person walks past the Montgomery County Election Services van in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
At stake is a lower court ruling in Butler County, Pennsylvania, where a local board of elections had disqualified provisional ballots cast by two residents in the 2024 primary election. That duo joined the Pennsylvania Democratic Party in a lawsuit seeking to have their votes counted, which was ultimately granted by a state Commonwealth Court and confirmed last week by a 4-3 majority in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court noted in its ruling that provisional votes can be counted only after a person’s eligibility to vote and rejection of their mail-in ballot are confirmed.
“Counting voters’ provisional ballots, when their mail-in votes are void for not using a secrecy envelope, is a legal right,” state Supreme Court Justice Christine Donohue wrote in the majority opinion, adding that the rule in question “aims to alleviate potential disenfranchisement for eligible voters.”
In their response to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, opponents argued that the Republican plaintiffs had left out important landmark cases in the state, namely that in the six years since the Pennsylvania General Assembly updated its voting law in 2019 to allow mail-in voting, “most county boards of elections and most Pennsylvania courts that have considered the issue have counted provisional ballots submitted by voters who had made a disqualifying error while attempting to complete their mail-in ballots” .
In fact, Butler County was one of the few counties that refused to count provisional ballots for votes that lacked secrecy envelopes, until it became the subject of a lawsuit earlier this year by the two plaintiffs whose votes They were not counted.
“The petitioners, who present a divergent interpretation of state law, asked “The Pennsylvania Supreme Court took up the case and decided it before the 2024 general election,” they wrote. “Last week, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court did just that. Just because the Republican National Committee doesn’t like the outcome is no reason for this Court to intervene emergency and alter the status quo on the eve of the election.”
This was challenged by the Republican plaintiffs. Joining the state GOP in the lawsuit, GOP attorneys described the case as one of “major public importance, potentially affecting tens of thousands of votes in a state that many anticipate could be decisive in control of the Senate.” of the US or even the 2024 presidential election.”
26 REPUBLICAN ATTORNEYS GENERAL JOIN VIRGINIA TO ASK THE SUPREME COURT TO RIDE ON THE VOTER LIST
Supporters at a campaign rally for former President Donald Trump in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. (Jeff Swensen for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
The appeal comes as Republicans have filed nearly 100 election-related court challenges in recent weeks, legal challenges they say are aimed at preventing voter fraud through absentee and mail-in voting. (Democrats, in turn, have tried to position themselves as the party that supports free and fair elections, seizing on Republican demands as a means to disenfranchise voters.)
Many of the lawsuits have been filed in one of seven swing states considered critical for either candidate to win the presidency.
In Pennsylvania, the GOP’s decision to join a lawsuit over provisional ballots in the final days of the campaign is likely a strategic move, analysts said: a sort of “placeholder” that allows them to cite a pre-existing legal challenge. in a swing state that they can point to by pushing for court action after an election.
It is “absolutely” easier to get a court involved in a case after an election if the plaintiffs already have a legal challenge on the books, Andrew McCarthy, former assistant US attorney general for the Southern District of New Yorkhe told Fox News Digital in an interview.
In those cases, “you could at least look at [judges] in the eye and say: ‘look’. “I’m not asking you to change the outcome of the election, I’m asking you to address the rules, which is what we tried to do before,” McCarthy said.
This is especially important in Pennsylvania, the battleground state with the most electoral votes at stake in 2024.
THE COURT OF APPEALS RUNS AGAINST THE GOP IN CASE CHALLENGING THE REGISTRATION OF 225,000 VOTERS IN NORTH CAROLINA
Voters fill out their ballots on Election Day in Columbus, Ohio, on Nov. 7, 2023. Ohio residents voted on Nov. 7, 2023 to enshrine abortion rights in the constitution of the Republican-led U.S. state, projected the American media, in what could be an indicator of an issue that will likely dominate next year’s presidential race. (Getty Images)
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It is unclear how many Pennsylvania residents will be shocked by the ruling of the provisional vote, and the Republican Party did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment.
Estimates have been murky at best: A 2021 study by MIT’s Election Data and Science Laboratory estimated that about 1.1% of mail-in ballots were not counted due to missing ballots. of secret envelopes. Mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania have been lower so far in 2024 than in 2020, when many relied on that process due to COVID-19 precautions.
More recently, New York University Law Professor Richard Pildes believes that the case could affect between 400 and 4,000 ballots in the state, although their “backwards” calculations focused only on naked ballots and not others submitted with incomplete information.
In a tight race, the wave of recent court cases has led some observers to fear that the lawsuits will disenfranchise potential voters, prevent supporters of one candidate or another from participating in the election or cast doubt on the election results. .
But analysts told Fox News they doubt any of these lawsuits will have a lasting impact on the 2024 election, despite the additional scrutiny and media coverage.
“In the five presidential elections that I’ve covered, I don’t think any pre-election challenge has had much of an impact,” Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, told Fox News Digital in a recent interview.
“I think we’re going to have a lot of litigation, but I’d be surprised if we had any hits in the jugular,” Turley said.
Get the latest updates from the 2024 election campaign, exclusive interviews and more in our Fox News Digital Election Center.
