Supreme Court In Pennsylvania Rules On Provisional Ballots
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled that voters who submit defective mail-in ballots can cast provisional ballots instead.
In a narrow four-to-three decision, the court ruled that Butler County’s Board of Elections must count provisional ballots from voters whose mail-in ballots were dismissed for not following proper instructions. Mail-in ballots missing the secrecy envelope, with incomplete details, or with incorrect information now permit voters to use provisional ballots, as reported by the Washington Examiner.
“It is difficult to discern any principled reading of the Free and Fair Election Clause that would allow the disenfranchisement of voters as punishment for failure to conform to the mail-in voting requirements when voters properly availed themselves of the provisional voting mechanism,” stated the majority ruling.
The case arose after Butler County residents sued the election board when their provisional ballots were discarded during the 2024 primary. Following an intermediate court’s ruling in the residents' favor, the Republican National Committee appealed.
Provisional ballots are issued when a voter’s eligibility is questioned and are counted only after confirming eligibility.
The Pennsylvania Democratic Party welcomed the ruling, noting Pennsylvania’s role as a major battleground, with Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump in a close race.
In a related development, the state Supreme Court recently overturned a lower court decision, ruling that mail-in ballots with missing or incorrect dates on the envelope would not be counted. This ruling was celebrated by election integrity advocates, as it reversed an earlier decision by a lower court, which found the mandate unenforceable due to the case not involving election boards across all 67 counties in Pennsylvania, according to the Associated Press. While counties run elections in Pennsylvania, the lawsuit initially targeted only two counties, Philadelphia and Allegheny.
The Commonwealth Court had earlier halted the enforcement of handwritten dates on mail-in envelopes, but the Supreme Court’s reversal now means many timely ballots could be disqualified in this critical swing state. As Democrats generally favor mail-in voting in Pennsylvania, this change could impact the presidential race outcome.
Republican groups that challenged the previous ruling celebrated it as a win for election integrity and a strategic boost for Trump, who narrowly lost Pennsylvania to Biden in 2020.
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley called the decision a “major victory for election integrity” that would “protect commonsense mail ballot safeguards and help voters cast their ballots with confidence.”
The court’s decision came just before Pennsylvania’s Oct. 21 voter registration deadline. State officials emphasized the deadline for residents wanting to participate in the election.
Attorneys for the ten left-leaning organizations that filed the lawsuit hinted at potential future litigation on the topic, noting, “Thousands of voters are at risk of having their ballots rejected in November for making a meaningless mistake,” according to Mimi McKenzie, legal director of the Public Interest Law Center in Philadelphia. She encouraged voters to “carefully read and follow the instructions for submitting a mail-in ballot to reduce the number of ballots being rejected for trivial paperwork errors.”
Two Democratic appointees joined their Republican counterparts on the state Supreme Court in this ruling.
The suit, initiated in May, argued that the mandate’s enforceability conflicted with Pennsylvania’s constitutional guarantee that elections be “free and equal,” as reported by the AP.
Recent election trends in Pennsylvania suggest that more than 10,000 ballots in this year’s general election could be disqualified due to missing or inaccurate envelope dates, potentially influencing the presidential race.