On November 1, the US Supreme Court upheld a Pennsylvania court's ruling on counting backup ballots for the 2024 US presidential election when mail-in ballots were rejected.
According to CNN, this ruling is seen as a defeat for the Republican Party in an important battleground state in this year's US election.
For Pennsylvania voters who experienced errors in preparing their mail-in ballots, the ruling gives them a way to have their provisional ballots counted.
It’s unclear how many Pennsylvania voters will be affected by the ruling, as not all counties in the state notified voters of the defective mail-in ballots. However, the parties in their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court described the development involving mail-in ballots and the backup ballots as potentially affecting at least “thousands” of ballots.
This week, Republicans filed an emergency appeal asking the U.S. Supreme Court to block a Pennsylvania state court ruling that allows provisional ballots to be counted if voters fail to place their ballots in a properly sealed envelope before mailing them.
Technically, the case is limited to two voters per county, but the Republican National Committee has argued that the issue is much broader, asking the court to either halt the lower court's ruling or split the disputed ballots across the state.
Ari Savitzky, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union's Voting Rights Project, which represents voters, called the ruling "a victory for democracy and the rule of law."
“The court was right to reject this last-minute attempt to downplay Pennsylvanians’ votes and interfere with the state’s election process. The bottom line is that voters deserve to be heard,” he said.
The Supreme Court’s decision on voting in Pennsylvania follows another ruling on October 30 that allowed Virginia to remove about 1,600 voters from its registration rolls. Republicans said the registrants claimed they were not eligible U.S. citizens. Voting rights groups said some eligible U.S. citizens were also involved in the error.
In the US presidential election four years ago, President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes. US election polls show that this year, Mr. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are in a neck-and-neck race.
