GOP steps up effort to block battle ground state voters who botch mail-in ballots: report

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Erik De La Garza
and
Raw Story
October 29, 2024Frontpage news and politics

Republicans are urging the Supreme Court to block a Pennsylvania ruling that allowed voters whose mail ballots were rejected due to a technicality to cast provisional ballots on Election Day.

The request filed Monday by the Republican National Committee and Pennsylvania GOP for the high court to step in came after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in a 4-3 opinion that the critical battleground state must allow voters “who make mistakes when returning their ballots – errors that would require the votes to be thrown out” – to cast provisional ballots on Nov. 5, Politico reported.

The American Civil Liberties Union said at the time that the Oct. 23 ruling was “a win for voting rights.”

"Provisional ballots provide a failsafe to ensure that eligible voters are not disenfranchised for unforeseen circumstances at the ballot box," the organization posted on X after the ruling.

The Republicans say in their stay application Monday that the “sharply divided” ruling “departed from the plain terms of the Election Code to dramatically change the rules governing mail voting,” and did so in the middle of the ongoing election, according to the filing.

They are asking the Supreme Court to block the state court’s ruling “for this election or, in the alternative, order any such provisional ballots be set aside so litigation over their validity can proceed after the election, if necessary,” according to Politico.

“The majority’s interpretation of the Election Code is not remotely plausible and cannot stand,” the Republicans said in the filing. “The court below ignored unambiguous statutory language.”

The number of provisional ballots at stake in the case is unclear, but Politico reported that Democrats would likely benefit if the state court ruling were to remain in place because Democrats in Pennsylvania, the publication noted, “tend to vote by mail at much higher rates than Republicans.”