Court allows Pa. ballot extension
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will allow Pennsylvania to count ballots received up to three days after the election, rejecting a Republican plea.
The justices divided 4-4 Monday, an outcome that upholds a state Supreme Court ruling that allowed election officials to receive and count ballots until Nov. 6, even if they don’t have a clear postmark.
Republicans, including President Donald Trump’s campaign, have opposed such an extension, arguing that it violates federal law that sets Election Day as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November and that such a decision constitutionally belongs to lawmakers, not the courts.
The decision follows indications earlier in the day that Republican lawmakers in Harrisburg wouldn’t pass legislation authorizing counties to process mail-in ballots before Election Day, which could delay results in the key battleground state.
Chief Justice John Roberts joined with the three liberal justices to reject Pennsylvania Republicans’ call for the court to block the state court ruling.
Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas would have required the state to stop accepting absentee ballots when the polls close on Nov. 3.
There were no opinions accompanying the order, so it is impossible to say what motivated either group of justices.
The conservative justices have been reluctant to allow court-ordered changes to voting rules close to an election.
The court also is weighing a similar issue from Wisconsin. But in that case, the ruling being challenged comes from a
federal appeals court and it’s the Democrats who are asking the justices to step in.
In Pennsylvania, the state Democratic Party and its allies had sought an extension of the Election Day deadline to count mailed ballots because Democratic-registered voters are requesting mail ballots at a nearly 3-to-1 ratio over Republicans.
In its Sept. 17 ruling, the
divided state Supreme Court said ballots must be postmarked by the time polls close and be received by county election boards at 5 p.m. on Nov. 6, three days after the Nov. 3 election. It also said that ballots lacking a clear postmark could be counted unless there was evidence that they were mailed after the polls closed.
Also Monday, after months of counties pushing for the move, the House Republican majority said in a statement that they have no plans to change election laws that will affect the Nov. 3 election.
Asked about it at a news conference later, Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, said he took the House Republican statement to mean that the bill is “dead.”
“So I’m taking them at their word,” Wolf said.
Wolf said he still wants to get legislation done and believes that there is still time to do it.
The 11th-hour fight is happening in the shadow of Trump’s claims at a recent rally near Harrisburg that the only way he can lose Pennsylvania to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is if Democrats cheat, a claim he also made in 2016’s election.
Talks stalled last week as House Republicans insisted that they only would allow counties to process mail-in ballots before Election Day in a package with provisions that Wolf has threatened to veto. Those provisions line up with fights that Trump’s campaign and the Republican Party are trying to win in the courts.
They include banning drop boxes that some counties are using to collect mail-in ballots and trying to lift a county residency requirement on certified poll watchers amid Trump’s calls for his supporters to “go into the polls and watch very carefully.”
Monday’s House Republican statement said Wolf “has not put anything on the table that can get through our caucus.”
To try to entice Republicans, Wolf offered provisions to add security requirements for the drop boxes that many counties — particularly heavily populated and Democratic-leaning counties — are using to help collect mail-in ballots from voters.
County officials have said that waiting until Election Day to dig into roughly 3 million mail-in ballots could require days to process enough ballots to proj
ect a winner in the presidential contest and erode confidence in the legitimacy of the process.
Eugene DiGirolamo, a Republican county commissioner in Bucks County, the state’s fourthmost populous county, said processing the ballots early is a “critical issue, not only for Bucks, but I would imagine for a lot of the other counties around the state, especially the larger ones.”
Processing the ballots involves extracting a ballot from the two envelopes it arrives in, flattening and scanning it, but not officially tabulating it until polls close.
Getting five to seven days before the election to accomplish all that is ideal, DiGirolamo said before the Supreme Court decision.
“I’d only be guessing, but my guess is if we’re only allowed to start on Election Day, it’s going to be three, four, five days after the election when we’ll have these things scanned and counted,” DiGirolamo said. “I am just scared to death that Pennsylvania is going to look really bad, especially if the election for president is close and they’re waiting for results from the battleground states like Pennsylvania truly is.”
Trump campaign officials say they don’t have enough poll watchers in some counties, including Philadelphia, a Democratic bastion that Trump has repeatedly suggested needs to be watched for election fraud.
Trump’s campaign has said that processing ballots before Election Day “must, at the very least, be a transparent process with a poll watcher in the room to ensure all rules are followed.”