Supreme Court upholds Pennsylvania provisional ballot ruling, in a major loss for GOP
The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a state court ruling that allowed for the counting of certain provisional ballots, in a major setback for the state GOP and Republican National Committee just four days before the election.
The Republican National Committee and the state GOP filed an emergency appeal to the nation's top court last week seeking to temporarily halt a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that ordered the state to count voters whose provisional ballots had been incorrectly filled out or were missing an inner "secrecy" envelope.
Attorneys for the Republican Party urged the Supreme Court to grant a full stay of the state’s decision, writing in a final reply brief submitted Thursday evening that such an order would "prevent multiple forms" of "irreparable harm" to the state.
At a minimum, the court was urged to grant a "segregation order" to allow the ballots to be set aside and counted separately.
"The actual provisional ballots contain no identifying information, only a vote," the GOP's lawyers wrote. "Once ballots are separated from their outer envelopes, there is no way to retroactively figure out which ballots were illegally cast. In other words, once the egg is scrambled, it cannot be unscrambled."
Fox News Digital's Breanne Deppisch contributed to this report.
