Court takes up Pennsylvania ‘naked ballot’ mail-in voting case – Butler Eagle

HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s highest court said Friday it will consider whether counties must accept provisional ballots cast at polling places on Election Day by voters whose mail ballots lacked privacy envelopes or were rejected for other defects.

It could determine the fate of thousands of votes that might otherwise be thrown out in the Nov. 5 election, when Pennsylvania is considered a crucial state in the presidential race.

The Supreme Court heard an appeal of a Commonwealth Court ruling just two weeks ago that Butler County had to count the provisional ballots of two voters who received automated emails before the April primary telling them their absentee ballots had been rejected because they were so-called “naked ballots” that were not included in the confidentiality envelope provided.

When the two voters tried to cast provisional ballots, election officials in Republican-majority Butler County rejected them, prompting a lawsuit. The voters lost in Butler County Court, but on September 5, a panel of Commonwealth Court judges overturned their decision, ruling that both votes should be counted.

The case is part of a series of lawsuits over the fate of mail-in ballots cast in Pennsylvania by voters who flouted rules when sending them in to be counted, including the highly controversial requirement that the outer envelopes have a specific, handwritten date. Democrats have embraced mail-in voting far more than Republicans since Pennsylvania lawmakers dramatically expanded it five years ago, on the eve of the pandemic.

The decision to take up the case comes a week after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned the Commonwealth Court’s decision in another mail-in ballot case, allowing counties to enforce the outer envelope date mandate.

The order issued Friday says the justices will consider whether counties must count provisional ballots cast by voters who did not submit their ballots in a secrecy envelope — the issue that tripped up the two Butler voters. But the Supreme Court has indicated it could also weigh in on the broader question of whether provisional ballots should be allowed for voters whose mail ballots are rejected for other reasons.

The appeal was filed by the Republican National Committee and the Pennsylvania Republican Party, which argued that the Commonwealth Court was conducting a court-ordered ballot correction that is not permitted under state election law.

The Supreme Court set deadlines next week for GOP entities, the two Butler voters who filed the lawsuit and the state Democratic Party that is siding with them, as well as others who want to weigh in.

Provisional ballots that are typically cast at polling places on Election Day are separated from regular ballots in cases where election officials need more time to determine a voter’s eligibility to vote.

Pennsylvania elections are run by county officials. It’s unclear how many of the state’s 67 counties don’t allow voters to replace a rejected absentee ballot with a provisional ballot, but the plaintiffs said at least nine other counties could have done so during the April primary.

About 21,800 mail-in ballots were rejected in the 2020 presidential election, out of about 2.7 million mail-in ballots cast in the state, according to the state elections office.