The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a state court ruling that allowed certain provisional ballots to be counted, in a major setback for the state GOP and Republican National Committee just four days before the election.

Republican National Committee and state GOP filed an emergency appeal last week at the nation’s Supreme Court, trying to temporarily halt a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that ordered the state to count voters whose provisional ballots were filled out incorrectly or lacked a “secret” inner envelope.

Republican Party lawyers asked the Supreme Court to grant a full stay of the state’s decision, writing in a final response filed late Thursday that such an order would “prevent multiple forms” of “irreparable harm” to the state.

At the very least, the court was urged to grant a “segregation order” to allow the ballots to be retained and counted separately.

“The actual provisional ballots contain no identifying information, only a vote,” GOP attorneys wrote. “Once the ballots are separated from their outer envelopes, there is no way to find out retroactively which bulletins were poured illegally. In other words, once the egg is scrambled, it cannot be untangled.”

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At issue is a lower court ruling in Butler County, Pennsylvania, where a local board of elections disqualified the provisional ballots cast by two residents in the 2024 primary election. The duo joined the Pennsylvania Democratic Party in a lawsuit that tried to have their votes counted, which was ultimately the result granted by a state Commonwealth Court and upheld last week by a 4-3 majority in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court noted in its ruling that provisional ballots can only be counted after confirming a person’s eligibility to vote and rejecting a mail-in ballot.

“Counting voters’ provisional ballots when their mail-in ballots are void because they did not use a secret envelope is a legal right,” state Supreme Court Justice Christine Donohue wrote in the majority opinion, adding that the rule at issue is “intended to mitigate potential disenfranchisement for eligible voters.”

In their response to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, opponents argued that the Republican plaintiffs omitted the history of the landmark case in the state — primarily, that in the six years since the Pennsylvania General Assembly updated its voting law in 2019 to allow ballots voting by mail. Most county boards of elections and most Pennsylvania courts that have considered this issue have counted provisional ballots submitted by voters who made a disqualifying error in attempting to complete their mail-in ballots.”

In fact, Butler County was among the few counties that refused to count provisional ballots for ballots without secret envelopes until it became the subject of a lawsuit earlier this year by the two plaintiffs whose ballots were not counted.

“The applicants, promoting a divergent interpretation of state law, he asked Pennsylvania Supreme Court to take the case and decide before the 2024 general election,” they wrote. “Last week, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court did just that. Just because the RNC doesn’t like the result is no reason the Court to intervene as an emergency and disrupt the status quo on the eve of the elections”.

That was it challenged by the Republican plaintiffs. Joining the state GOP in the lawsuit, GOP attorneys described the case as one of “critical public importance, potentially affecting tens of thousands of votes in a state that many anticipate could be decisive in the US Senate or even the 2024 presidential election”.

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The call comes as Republicans have filed nearly 100 election-related lawsuits in recent weeks, legal challenges they say they target. preventing voter fraud by absentee ballots and by mail. (Democrats, on the other hand, have sought to position themselves as the party that supports free and fair elections, seizing on Republican lawsuits as a means of disenfranchising voters.)

Many of the lawsuits were filed in one of the seven swing states considered essential for either candidate to win the presidency.

In Pennsylvania, the GOP’s decision to join a provisional ballot lawsuit in the final days of the campaign is likely a strategic move, analysts say — a kind of “placeholder” that allows them to cite a pre-existing legal challenge in a state fluctuating which they can point to to claim that the courts act after the election.

It’s “absolutely” easier to get a court to get involved in a case after an election if the plaintiffs already have a legal challenge on the books, Andrew McCarthy, a former deputy US attorney general for Southern District of New YorkFox News Digital said in an interview.

In those cases, “you could at least look (the judges) in the eye and say, ‘Look. I’m not asking you to change the outcome of the election, I’m asking you to address the rules, which is what we tried to do before,’” McCarthy said.

This is especially important in Pennsylvania, the battleground state with the most electoral votes at stake in 2024.

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It’s unclear how many residents will be in Pennsylvania affected by provisional vote ruling, and the Republican Party did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment.

Estimates were bleak at best: A 2021 study by MIT’s Electoral Science and Data Lab estimated that about 1.1 percent of mail-in ballots were not counted due to missing secret envelopes. Mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania have been smaller so far in 2024 than in 2020, when many relied on the process because of COVID-19 precautions.

More recently, New York University law professor Richard Pildes estimated that the case could affect between 400 and 4,000 ballots in the state — though his “behind-the-napkin” math focused only on blank ballots, not others sent in with incomplete information.

In a tight race, the spate of recent lawsuits has led some observers to fear that the lawsuits will either disenfranchise potential voters, prevent one or the other candidate’s supporters from running, or cast doubt on regarding the election results.

But analysts told Fox News they doubt any of these lawsuits will have a prolonged impact on the 2024 election, despite the added scrutiny and media coverage.

“In the five presidential elections that I’ve covered, I don’t think any pre-election challenge has had a huge impact,” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told Fox News Digital in a recent interview.

“I think we’re going to have a lot of litigation, but I’d be surprised if we have jugular strikes,” Turley said.

In a joint statement Friday night, the Harris campaign and the Democratic National Committee praised the high court’s decision.

“In Pennsylvania and across the country, Trump and his allies are trying to make it harder for your vote to count, but our institutions are stronger than his shameful attacks,” they told Fox News Digital.

“Today’s decision confirms that, for every eligible voter, the right to vote means the right to have your vote counted.”

Get the latest updates from the 2024 election campaign, exclusive interviews and more at Fox News Digital’s election hub.

Source of the original article: Supreme Court upholds Pennsylvania’s provisional ballot decision in a major loss for the GOP