On Monday, October 28, the Republican National Committee (RNC) requested an emergency order from the Supreme Court to halt the counting of certain provisional ballots in Pennsylvania.
According to reports from the Associated Press, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled by a vote of 4-3 to allow voters to cast provisional ballots when election officials discover problems with their absentee ballots, especially in cases where they did not place the ballot in a “secrecy envelope” before mailing it.
The secrecy envelope is meant to keep the contents of the ballot confidential when election officials open the outer envelope, and voters are required to sign and date the outer envelope.
In their appeal, the RNC stated, “This case is of paramount public importance, potentially affecting tens of thousands of ballots in the state, which could have a decisive impact on control of the U.S. Senate and even the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.”
The RNC pointed out that the state legislature did not provide for voters to recast their ballots if they made a mistake when mailing them and that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision to allow voters to cast provisional ballots after their mailed ballots have been rejected encroaches upon the state legislature’s authority.
Republicans are asking the Supreme Court to stay the state court’s ruling, or at least require that these provisional ballots be segregated and not included in the official vote count while legal challenges are ongoing.
The RNC has requested that the Supreme Court make a decision on Pennsylvania’s case by Friday, November 1.
CNN reported that Supreme Court conservative Justice Samuel Alito is handling emergency cases from Pennsylvania and other mid-Atlantic states. He has requested a response to the case by Wednesday afternoon, October 30.
So far, 2 million mail-in ballots have been requested by Pennsylvania voters.
On the same day, Virginia also sought Supreme Court intervention to allow the state to remove approximately 1,600 voters believed to be non-citizens from the voter rolls. Last Friday, a federal judge blocked the state from purging voters identified by Republicans as failing to prove their citizenship from the voter list.