PA voters who submitted 'naked ballots' allowed to vote provisionally: Court
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that voters in the swing state must be allowed to cast a provisional ballot at their polling place if their mail-in ballot was previously rejected because it was not placed in a so-called "secrecy envelope."
The case stems from two voters in Butler County whose mail-in-ballots were rejected after they were sent in without the required secrecy envelope, creating what is known as a "naked ballot." They later submitted provisional ballots, but they were not counted, leading to the lawsuit.
In its ruling, the court said Butler County "erred" when it rejected those provisional ballots to be uncounted and affirmed the lower courts ruling directing them to be counted.
"The General Assembly wrote the Election Code with the purpose of enabling citizens to exercise their right to vote, not for the purpose of creating obstacles to voting," the opinion said.
The ruling is a loss for the Republican National Committee, which was looking to have the lower court's ruling overturned and have those voters' provisional ballots remain uncounted. It is one of the multiple cases around the country the RNC is involved in, litigating over which ballots should count during the 2024 election.
The court seemed to reprimand the RNC repeatedly in its order, including for "engaging in wordplay to confuse the Code and reach an absurd result" where provisional ballots of these voters should not be counted.
The order also rebuked the RNC's claims that "election integrity" calls for the votes to not be counted stating, "[W]e are at a loss to identify what honest voting principle is violated by recognizing the validity of one ballot cast by one voter."
-ABC News' Olivia Rubin