By CatholicVote | Created at 2024-10-30 21:34:47 | Updated at 2024-10-30 23:29:46
1 hour ago
Election integrity advocates are on high alert as several battleground states garner media attention, including Pennsylvania – a state that many consider to be of primary influence in the election of the next president.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Republican Party of Pennsylvania asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to block a ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that requires election boards to count provisional ballots submitted by voters whose mail-in ballots have been determined to be invalid.
Amy Howe of Howe on the Court reported:
The RNC and the Pennsylvania Republicans argue that the state supreme court had “dramatically change[d] the rules governing mail voting.” And in so doing, they contend, the state court had violated the U.S. Constitution by usurping the state legislature’s role in regulating federal elections.
Pennsylvania voters who use mail-in ballots are required to use two envelopes: one called a secrecy envelope, and another called a declaration envelope – the latter of which must be signed and dated. Ballots that lack a secrecy envelope are supposedly separated by a ballot-sorting machine. The voters are then informed they may cast a provisional vote, in person, on Election Day.
“By a vote of 4-3, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed that as long as the mail-in ballots are not counted, the provisional ballots should be,” wrote Howe.
But the RNC argued in its filing:
The Election Code provision at issue could not be clearer: “A provisional ballot shall not be counted if the elector’s [mail] ballot is timely received by a county board of elections.”
“This Court bears the constitutional responsibility of ensuring that state courts do not ‘unconstitutionally intrude upon the role specifically reserved to state legislatures,’” the RNC asserted. “When the legislature says that certain ballots can never be counted, a state court cannot blue-pencil that clear command into always. And here, the General Assembly could not have been clearer.”
According to Howe, Justice Samuel Alito ordered election boards “to keep mail-in ballots received after election day separate and, if they are counted, to count them separately.”
Additionally, Alito ordered the other parties to respond to the RNC’s application by Wednesday.
The Trump-Vance campaign on Wednesday announced it had filed a lawsuit against Bucks County, Pennsylvania, for “turning away voters.”
“This is a direct violation of Pennsylvanians’ rights to cast their ballot – and all voters have a right to STAY in line,” the campaign asserted, adding:
The Pennsylvania Department of State made clear if voters are in line at a county elections office by 5:00PM, the counties MUST give voters the opportunity to apply for their mail-in ballot. Pennsylvania voters were turned away as early as 2:30PM.
The campaign also urged voters to remain in line to vote and report to its lawyers if they are told to leave:
This is against the law. This is voter suppression from the left. We will fight for every legal vote in Pennsylvania. Go vote, and stay in line!
Do not let election officials turn you away. If you are turned away, submit a report to our lawyers here: https://pennsylvania.protectthevote.com/hc
Last week, officials in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, also announced they had identified “as many as 2,500 completed voter registration forms” as potentially fraudulent, the Washington Examiner reported.
A press release from the Lancaster County Board of Elections stated about 2,500 voter registration forms “have been contained and segregated” and are “going through an extensive multi-step review process … The Board of Elections staff are then providing these applications to the District Attorney’s Office for further investigation as warranted.”
The board continued:
Lancaster County Detectives began investigating the voter registration applications and immediately found applications that were indeed fraudulent. In some cases, applications contained correct personal identification information such as the right address, phone, DOB, driver’s license and social security number, but the individual listed on the application informed Detectives that they did not request the form, did not complete the form and verified that the signature on the form was not theirs.
In September, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had ruled that undated or misdated ballots cast in the state would not count for the 2024 election.
The request to the U.S. Supreme Court from Pennsylvania comes as the Court in a 6-3 ruling on Wednesday allowed Virginia to remove suspected noncitizens from its voter rolls.
The RNC received a blow, however, in Nevada, where the state Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling that mail-in ballots that arrive up to three days after Election Day, November 5, “must be counted,” even though a postmark “cannot be determined.”
Blaze Media reported:
The Nevada Supreme Court determined that the RNC lacked standing, claiming it failed to provide sufficient evidence that counting ballots without a postmark would be vulnerable to voter fraud or that current security measures were insufficient to address the concerns.
…
The justices also rejected the RNC’s argument that mail ballots favor Democrats.
In Oregon and Washington, hundreds of ballots were reportedly destroyed in ballot box fires – events that are believed to be connected.
As The Epoch Times reported Monday:
Two fires at ballot drop boxes in Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington, led to police responses early on Oct. 28, with one fire resulting in the destruction of potentially hundreds of ballots. Officials said at a press conference that they believe the incidents are connected and that they have identified a suspect vehicle.
The Portland Police Bureau (PPB) said that, after extinguishing the fire, security officers “quickly determined that there was an incendiary device that had been attached to the ballot box.”’
A similar situation was discovered in Vancouver’s Clark County, where another “incendiary device” was determined to have been placed in a drop box several hours later. Hundreds of ballots were potentially destroyed by fire, as reported by local ABC outlet KATU.
Readers can find CatholicVote’s coverage on recent court cases concerning election integrity below:
Nevada Supreme Court rules late, non-postmarked ballots can count
Federal court rules that mail-in ballots received after Election Day should not count
