DOYLESTOWN, Pa. (AP) — The
Supreme Court on Friday rejected an emergency appeal from Republicans that could have led to thousands of provisional ballots not being counted in Pennsylvania as the presidential campaigns vie in the final days before the election in the nation’s biggest battleground state.
The justices left in place a state Supreme Court ruling that elections officials must count provisional ballots cast by voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected.
The ruling is a victory for voting-rights advocates, who had sought to force counties — primarily Republican-controlled counties — to let voters cast a provisional ballot on Election Day if their mail-in ballot was to be rejected for a garden-variety error.
While the Supreme Court action was a setback for Republicans, the GOP separately claimed victory in a decision by Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court. That court rejected a last-ditch effort by voting rights advocates to ensure that mail-in ballots that lack an accurate, handwritten date on the exterior envelope will still count in this year’s presidential election.
