On Friday, November 1st, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court accepted the request from the Republican Party, declaring that this election must not count mailed ballots with missing or incorrect dates.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court on Friday, requesting the court to order election officials not to count mailed ballots with missing or incorrect dates as per a ruling by lower courts on Wednesday, October 30th.
The Republican Party expressed concerns over the decision of the lower court, questioning that the ruling allowed election workers to count ballots that did not meet the requirements, which not only potentially violates the state constitution but might also impact the final outcome of this year’s election, with an estimated thousands of ballots affected.
In the Supreme Court’s ruling, judges voted 3-2 to order that while there were 69 mailed ballots with date discrepancies or no date marking in the September special election, these ballots did not impact the final election results. However, the judges also specified that the lower court’s ruling “is not applicable to the national election on November 5th,” hence similar problematic ballots cannot be considered in this national election.
Chief Justice Kevin Dougherty criticized the lower court for intervening in the election with their ruling near the election date. He pointed out that despite multiple warnings issued to those courts while handling the cases, they still “fell for it repeatedly,” and such rulings could negatively affect the election process.
Dougherty stated that the content expressed in this order is clear and leaves no room for misunderstanding. He wrote, “Before granting relief, lower courts should think twice, even thrice, as relief might be seen as ‘making significant alterations to current laws and procedures during elections.'”
However, Chief Justice Debra Todd and Justice Christine Donohue indicated that legal disputes related to elections frequently arise during the election period, so there is no need to “condemn” the lower courts’ rulings on these cases.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) believed that the Republican Party’s request was meaningless because election officials stamp the time on mailed ballots upon receipt, a decision supported by the Pennsylvania Republican Secretary of State.