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    • Judges allow provisional ballots for Pennsylvania voters
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    Judges allow provisional ballots for Pennsylvania voters

    Pabio Posted on

    Top line

    The Supreme Court rejected a Republican request to block a lower court ruling that gave Pennsylvania voters access to provisional ballots if they botched their mail-in ballots, potentially opening the state up from the field. from battle to thousands of voices that wouldn’t have been the case if the Supreme Court had sided with the Republican Party — as the court faces a series of last-minute cases regarding state voting rules ahead of Election Day.

    Key facts

    The Republican National Committee request The Supreme Court ruled Monday to block a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling allowing voters to cast provisional ballots if their mail-in ballots have errors, such as missing a signature or date on an envelope.

    The Supreme Court rejected the request Friday, saying in a filing that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision only concerned two votes cast in the months-old Pennsylvania primary and that upholding the court’s ruling would not would result in “no binding obligations” on Pennsylvania officials “responsible for the conduct of this year’s elections.”

    The decision comes after the court took up a case regarding voting in Virginia, as reported by Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares. request The Supreme Court on Monday asked to overturn a lower court ruling that blocked the state from carrying out a purge of its voter rolls to remove 1,600 suspected non-citizens, which the federal government said also had resulted in the mistaken removal of US citizens.

    The justices sided with the state Wednesday in a 6-3 ruling, rejecting the lower court’s decision and allowing Virginia to proceed with the voter purge — without offering any explanation for the decision and noting only that Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson reportedly denied Virginia’s request.

    The Justice Department argued that the voter suppression was illegal because it was done too close to Election Day, as required by federal law. bars states have banned removing voters from the rolls less than 90 days before an election, and lower federal district and appellate courts have sided with the federal government, ordering Virginia to re-register voters from the rolls electoral.

    To watch

    It remains to be seen how many additional disputes the High Court will be called upon to decide before Election Day.

    Tangent

    Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who suspended his campaign and supported former President Donald Trump, also asked the court to rule on his candidacy, asking that his name be removed from the ballots in Michigan and Wisconsin, while voting was already underway. The court denied those demands Tuesday, leaving Kennedy on state ballots.

    What we don’t know

    If and how the Supreme Court could affect elections. Trump and his allies asked the court in 2020 to take up a series of post-election litigation challenging President Joe Biden’s victory, as the ex-president fought in court to try to overturn the results of the elections. The Supreme Court uniformly rejected all of these challenges, but it remains to be seen how the 6-3 conservative court will act if asked to weigh in on post-election challenges again this cycle. The judges already gave Trump a victory Before the general election, by stifling Democratic efforts to disqualify him from state ballots under the 14th Amendment, ruling states cannot eliminate federal candidates.

    Surprising fact

    The Supreme Court apparently gave itself more leeway to shape state election rules with its 2023 ruling in the voting case. Moore v. HarperVox Remarks. The court in that case struck down a legal theory that Trump and his allies tried to use to overturn the 2020 election, which said state lawmakers should have broad authority to determine election rules — a power Trump wanted that state legislators use to vote out their states. election results and declare Trump the winner. That being said, the justices also ruled that state courts cannot object to state legislators’ election rules in a way that “exceeds

    Key context

    Both Republicans and Democrats have filed dozens of lawsuits challenging voting rules ahead of Election Day, especially as Trump and his allies have sown distrust in the results and the election process. The RNC has spear a massive “election integrity” effort targeting election practices that the party believes will encourage voter fraud – even though evidence shows that such fraud is extremely rare and there is no evidence of any widespread electoral fraud in the last elections. As GOP-led states have done tightened voting rules in response to Trump’s fraud allegations, Democrats have also filed numerous lawsuits aimed at expanding voter access. While legal battles have been playing out in court for months, court decisions intensified ahead of Election Day, and Marc Elias, a voting rights lawyer aligned with the Democratic Party, said As of Sunday, 199 challenges remain pending in 40 states.

    Further reading

    ForbesHow the courts are affecting the 2024 elections: Court blocks last-minute purge of Virginia voter rollsBy Alison Durkee

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