The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that voters who cast faulty mail-in ballots can subsequently cast provisional votes.

In a four-to-three decision, the state Supreme Court determined that the Butler County Board of Elections must count the provisional ballots of voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected for not following instructions properly. Voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected for lacking the secrecy envelope, missing information, or containing inaccurate information are now allowed to vote using provisional ballots, the Washington Examiner reported.

“It is difficult to discern any principled reading of the Free and Fair Election Clause that would allow the disenfranchisement of voters as punishment for failure to conform to the mail-in voting requirements when voters properly availed themselves of the provisional voting mechanism,” the majority ruling said.

Butler County residents had sued the election board after their provisional ballots were rejected during the 2024 primary. After an intermediate court ruled in favor of the residents, the case was appealed by the Republican National Committee.

A provisional ballot is cast when a voter’s eligibility is in question and is only counted after their eligibility is confirmed.

Advertisement

The decision was hailed by the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, the outlet reported. Pennsylvania is the largest battleground state, with Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump in a tight race.

The state’s Supreme Court reversed a lower court ruling last week, determining that mail-in ballots with incorrect dates or no dates on the exterior of the envelope cannot be counted in what supporters viewed as a significant win for advocates of election integrity.

In a 4-3 ruling, the state’s highest court stated that a lower court, which had deemed the mandate unenforceable, should not have heard the case since it did not involve election boards from all 67 counties, according to The Associated Press. In Pennsylvania, counties are responsible for administering elections, but the left-leaning groups that filed the case only sued two counties—Philadelphia and Allegheny.

Two weeks prior, the Commonwealth Court had paused the enforcement of handwritten dates on exterior envelopes. The Supreme Court’s reversal of this decision now raises the possibility that thousands of ballots arriving on time could be discarded in a crucial swing state, potentially affecting the outcome of a closely contested presidential race. Notably, more Democrats tend to vote by mail in this battleground state than Republicans.

Republican groups that appealed the decision hailed it as a significant victory for honesty in elections and a major boost for former President Donald Trump, who narrowly lost Pennsylvania to Joe Biden in 2020.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley, in a release, called it a major victory for election integrity “that will protect commonsense mail ballot safeguards and help voters cast their ballots with confidence.”

The state high court’s ruling came just ahead of Pennsylvania’s voter registration deadline of Oct. 21. State election officials note that if residents want to vote in this year’s elections, they had to be registered by then.

Attorneys representing the ten left-wing ‘community’ organizations that filed the lawsuit stated that the decision left the door open for further litigation on the issue.

“Thousands of voters are at risk of having their ballots rejected in November for making a meaningless mistake,” said Mimi McKenzie, legal director of the Public Interest Law Center in Philadelphia. She urged voters to “carefully read and follow the instructions for submitting a mail-in ballot to reduce the number of ballots being rejected for trivial paperwork errors.”

Two Democratic appointees joined both Republican appointees on the state Supreme Court in the ruling.

The lawsuit, filed in May, challenged the enforceability of the mandate based on a state constitutional provision ensuring that all elections are “free and equal,” the AP reported.

Recent elections in Pennsylvania suggest that more than 10,000 ballots in this year’s general election could be discarded due to incorrect or missing envelope dates—potentially influencing the outcome of the presidential race.