Republicans have made an emergency request to the U.S. Supreme Court in Pennsylvania, seeking an order that could potentially lead to the exclusion of thousands of votes in the upcoming election in the crucial battleground state. The request comes just over a week before the election and revolves around a dispute concerning provisional ballots cast by Pennsylvania voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected due to technical issues as per state law.
The state's high court recently ruled 4-3 that election officials must count provisional ballots from voters whose mail-in ballots were invalidated because they lacked mandatory secrecy envelopes. This decision has prompted the Republicans to seek intervention from the Supreme Court.
On the same day, Virginia also approached the Supreme Court in a separate matter related to voter registration purging. Notably, four years ago, the Supreme Court addressed voting rule changes in several states, including Pennsylvania, that were implemented due to the pandemic.
In their filing with the high court, state and national Republicans have requested an order to either suspend the state court ruling or, alternatively, to segregate the provisional ballots and refrain from including them in the official vote count until the legal dispute is resolved.
