Pennsylvania high court gives voters provisional option if their mail ballots get rejected

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: AP

Updated 7:20 PM EDT, October 23, 2024


HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania’s highest court on Wednesday said people whose mail ballots are rejected for not following technical procedures in state law can cast provisional ballots, a decision sure to affect some of the thousands of mail-in votes likely to be rejected this fall.

The Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that Butler County’s Republican-majority election board must count provisional ballots that were cast by two voters after they learned their mail-in ballots were voided because they arrived without mandatory secrecy envelopes. The decision was a legal defeat for the Republican National Committee and the state Republican Party, which had argued Butler County had correctly rejected the provisional ballots cast during the April primary.

Secrecy envelopes keep ballots concealed as elections workers open the stamped outer envelopes used to mail the whole packets back. Voters also must sign and date the exterior envelopes. Pennsylvania voters have so far applied for more than 1.9 million mail ballots.

The two voters had received emails notifying them of the “naked ballot” problem, and they both went to their polling places on the primary election day and cast provisional ballots. They sued after learning the Butler County Board of Elections also rejected their provisional ballots, and a county judge upheld the election officials’ decisions.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/pennsylvania-voting-election-mail-ballots-f9a5e83b330a4555a779230e4bc3d139

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Good because this impacts the thousands without signatures/dates, etc. I know from past elections, although "curing" has been available and promoted in many counties (but not all), it can often mean an extra trip to one of the few election offices to do it (Philly recently opened up 10 new ones outside of the one in City Hall, to correspond to one per each Councilmanic District, so that helps with travel distance to "cure" ).

[JohnSJ]

1. That is good, but if people have the opportunity to correct the problem and resubmit the ballot it would better I think,

because I suspect the rethugs will fight in courts provisional especially if they are in favor of repugs.

[BumRushDaShow]

2. The law is vague so not all counties seem to want to accept the option of doing ballot "curing"

but even then, the issue has been WHERE that needs to be done and the limited locations to do it. Here in Philly, there was only one or 2 places in the city that it could be done and mainly at the Election office in City Hall downtown. They recently opened up more "permanent" locations this year to supplement that and offer other election-related services, so that would help with people getting some place to fix whatever problem they were flagged with.

The provisional ballot is a federal mandate which is why the GOP loses any cases they file trying to reject them.

[JohnSJ]

3. Thanks for the history.