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

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" ).