A voter casts her early voting ballot on October 17, 2020 in Philadelphia. In-person early voting by using mail ballots, enabled millions of voters to cast their ballots. (Photo by Mark Makela/Getty Images)
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled on Friday that it will take up a case to decide whether Pennsylvania counties must allow voters who make disqualifying mistakes filling out their mail-in ballots to vote provisionally.
The ruling is only the latest in a string of court cases over how counties should handle mail-in ballots if voters err in filling them out, and what options voters have if they make mistakes. The ultimate decisions will likely have an impact on the administration of the 2024 election.
The case was originally brought by two voters in Butler County, represented by civil rights groups, who returned their mail-in ballots without the required secrecy envelope. Both were made aware of their mistakes and went to their polling places to cast provisional ballots, but those were rejected by the elections board.
Earlier this month, the Commonwealth Court ruled that their ballots had to be counted. But the Butler County Board of Elections, the Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of Pennsylvania appealed to the state Supreme Court.
A provisional ballot can be filled out at a polling place if a voter is concerned that their vote will not be counted because of issues like mail-in ballot errors or voter eligibility. If the voter is found to in fact be eligible to vote, and that they haven’t already submitted a correctly filled-in ballot, typically their provisional ballot will be counted.
A separate court case being litigated by civil rights groups is dealing with whether counties have to count mail-in ballots when voters forget to date the envelopes. The commonwealth court ruled that they did, but the state Supreme Court threw out that decision and dismissed the case on procedural grounds. So, as it stands, counties do not have to count incorrectly dated ballots.
Mimi McKenzie, the legal director at the Public Interest Law Center, which is representing voters in that case and others, said they will be making a decision on how to proceed soon.
In a third mail-in voting-related case, a local court ruled that voters in Washington County had to be notified if errors were found on their mail-in ballots to ensure they have the chance to cast provisional ballots.
That case was appealed to the Commonwealth Court by the Washington County elections board and Republican groups. It is ongoing.
“There’s a lot of confusion out there with all of these different court decisions coming down,” McKenzie said. “I think one encouraging note is all the appellate courts are moving very quickly on all of these issues. I think everyone is on the same page that it’s important to get these issues resolved before it’s time to start counting the votes.”
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