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From Fox News: The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a state court ruling that allowed for the counting of certain provisional ballots, in a major setback for the state GOP and Republican National Committee just four days before the election.
The Republican National Committee and the state GOP filed an emergency appeal to the nation’s top court last week seeking to temporarily halt a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that ordered the state to count voters whose provisional ballots had been incorrectly filled out or were missing an inner “secrecy” envelope.
Attorneys for the Republican Party urged the Supreme Court to grant a full stay of the state’s decision, writing in a final reply brief submitted Thursday evening 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, only a vote,” the GOP’s lawyers wrote. “Once ballots are separated from their outer envelopes, there is no way to retroactively figure out which ballots were illegally cast. In other words, once the egg is scrambled, it cannot be unscrambled.”
READ MORE at Fox News.
🚨 | Supreme Court rejects Republican appeal, allows Pennsylvania voters who sent in mail-in ballots marked as potentially flawed to submit separate provisional ballots in person pic.twitter.com/oOKbPKCMuR
— VOZ (@Voz_US) November 1, 2024
Supreme Court upholds Pennsylvania provisional ballot ruling, in a major loss for GOP https://t.co/h4T2jTYftA
— Fox News Politics (@foxnewspolitics) November 1, 2024
However, in a separate case, the Pennsylvania state Supreme Court has sided with Republicans, affirming that mail ballots with missing, improper dates can’t be counted
From The Hill: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Friday accepted Republicans’ request to again declare that mail ballots returned with a missing or incorrect date cannot be counted this election.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) filed an emergency appeal to ensure that election officials do not leverage a lower court’s ruling handed down Wednesday finding such disqualification violates the state constitution.
That 3-2 ruling concerned 69 misdated and undated ballots in a September special election, where the outcome was not in doubt either way.
But Republicans raised concerns the decision injects new uncertainty in the days leading to the presidential election, where potentially thousands of ballots are at stake in the battleground that both campaigns see as a must-win.
The court’s unsigned order states the lower ruling “shall not be applied to the November 5, 2024 General Election.”
UPDATE: The PA Supreme Court says the lower court order WILL NOT apply to the November 5th election. That means ballot return envelopes must be properly dated. https://t.co/6CXVu9JTA4 pic.twitter.com/pLUy5TmWpA
— Carter Walker (@ByCarterWalker) November 1, 2024
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