The Supreme Court on Friday rejected an emergency appeal from Republicans that could have led to thousands of provisional ballots not being counted in the 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.
As of Thursday, about 9,000 ballots out of more than 1.6 million returned have arrived at elections offices around Pennsylvania lacking a secrecy envelope, a signature or a date, according to state records.
Pennsylvania is the biggest presidential election battleground this year, with 19 electoral votes.
Former President Donald Trump won the state in 2016, then lost it in 2020.
It is one of the seven swing states, and is the one that could decide the outcome of one of the closest races in history.
Experts have called Pennsylvania the most likely tipping point state. It has 19 electoral votes.
In 2020, it was decided by about 80,000 votes.
The case dealt in part with ‘naked ballots,’ those without a security sleeve that gets included in mail ballots but which some voters may neglect to use.
The Republican National Committee said it could impact ‘tens of thousands of votes in a state which many anticipate could be decisive.’
Wrote Justice Samuel Alito, ‘even if we agreed with the applicants’ federal constitutional argument (a question on which I express no view at this time), we could not prevent the consequences they fear.’
There weren’t any dissents.
The Supreme Court’s rejection comes after an intervention by its conservative majority, off its ‘shadow docket’, that boosted the Republican position in Virginia.
That decision, which the court released without explanation, allowed the state to purge about about 1,600 people from its rolls just a week before the election.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) argued it was necessary to block people who could be noncitizens. But the Justice Department opposed it, arguing that some people kicked off the roles might be eligible voters who simply filled out a form wrong.
Current photo identification must be required for all votes to count, even mailed in. Without Verification of who is voting we might as well just let tourists and illegal’s to vote and have it count!
SCOTUS is either compromised, being paid off, blackmailed or being coerced into making the “right” ruling on this.