US Election 2024: Supreme Court Rejects Republican Appeal On Pennsylvania Ballot Count

The United States Supreme Court has dismissed an emergency appeal by Republicans to prevent the counting of some so-called provisional ballots in Pennsylvania.

If the move had succeeded that means thousands of votes would not have been counted and tallied as part of this year’s presidential election

Republicans in the state, which Joe Biden and the Democrats narrowly won in the 2020 US presidential election on their way to victory, had argued that “tens of thousands of votes” could be at stake and ought to have been rejected.

With this ruling, the justices left in place a state Supreme Court ruling that earlier directed elections officials in the swing State to count provisional ballots cast by voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected.

Reports suggested that as of late on Thursday this week, about 9,000 ballots out of more than 1.6 million were returned, as they had arrived at election offices around Pennsylvania lacking a secrecy envelope, a signature or a date.

Pennsylvania is the biggest presidential election battleground this year, with 19 electoral votes. Donald Trump won the state in 2016, but lost it in 2020.

The ruling represents victory for voting-rights advocates, who had tried to force various counties, especially Republican-controlled counties, to allow voters to cast a provisional ballot on Election Day if they had realised their mail-in ballot was to be rejected for any of a variety of errors.

Provisional ballots generally protect voters from being excluded from the voting process if their eligibility is uncertain on Election Day. The vote is counted once officials confirm eligibility.

Democrats had intervened on the side of the activists, arguing that if a defective mail-in ballot could not be counted, that person had not yet voted and a provisional ballot must be counted.

In a joint statement after the Supreme Court judgment, Harris campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler and Democratic National Committee spokesperson Rosemary Boeglin said; “In Pennsylvania and across the country, Trump and his allies are trying to make it harder for your vote to count, but our institutions are stronger than his shameful attacks.

“[This] decision confirms that, for every eligible voter, the right to vote means the right to have your vote counted.”