The Supreme Court Is Already Deciding Major Election-Related Cases, With More Likely To Come

With Election Day less than a week away, the Supreme Court is already weighing several cases that will impact vote-counting procedures and which ballots will be counted. This week, the court granted an emergency stay to the state of Virginia, allowing it to purge roughly 1,600 individuals who identified as non-citizens from its voting rolls. The high court also rejected former independent presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s emergency appeal to have his name taken off the ballot in Wisconsin and Michigan. However, there are other cases still pending before the Supreme Court as of Thursday. Around the country, state and federal courts have and will decide dozens of election-related cases that could make their way up to the high court in the coming days and after election day.For example, the Supreme Court has yet to rule on Republicans’ request for an emergency order to block Pennsylvania from counting provisional ballots cast by voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected for technical reasons.While many states let voters fix or “cure” a ballot if there is a technical issue such as a wrong date or a question about the signature, the Keystone State does not have a statewide standard for how to address such issues on ballots. Instead, it is decided on a county-by-county basis. A ruling by Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court said that election officials must give voters the chance to cast a provisional ballot if their mail-in ballot was rejected for not being returned with a secrecy envelope. Republicans argued the decision violated Pennsylvania law and have asked the Supreme Court to block the state court ruling.In its request, the Republican National Committee wrote, “Without this Court’s intervention, the county boards will count ballots that are unlawful under the Election Code. Once that happens, it will be impossible to repair election results that have been tainted by illegally counted ballots.”The MIT Election Lab estimates that in 2020, Pennsylvania rejected 1.29 percent of mail-in ballots. While that is a small percent of the millions of votes cast in Pennsylvania, letting voters cast a provisional ballot if their absentee ballot had a technical issue could amount to thousands of votes that could impact the results of a close election. A law professor at New York University, Richard Pildes, estimates that the Pennsylvania case could impact roughly 25,000 votes based on the absentee ballot rejection rate. The director of MIT’s Election Lab, Charles Stewart, told the Sun he believes the issue of whether voters can “cure” their ballots in Pennsylvania could lead to a significant, prolonged legal challenge that delays the results of the election.Aside from the cases already pending before the Supreme Court, Republicans and President Trump’s allies have signaled they are ready to file challenges after Election Day. The RNC has recruited around 500 volunteer attorneys to get involved in litigation on Election Day and the subsequent days and weeks. That is in addition to the 100,000 attorneys and volunteers who have been working to file legal challenges ahead of November 5. Republicans have already filed more than 130 election-related lawsuits.An attorney for Trump, Mike Davis, told ABC News earlier this month, “Trump learned his lesson from 2020, and he has a really good legal team at the campaign and the RNC…We are so much better prepared.” Democrats have also staffed up to fight back against Republican legal challenges.State and federal courts have heard arguments in cases involving how to handle overseas and military ballots, ballots that arrive after election day, ballots with technical defects, or whether convicted felons can vote, all issues that have the potential to wind up before the Supreme Court and impact which ballots are counted.

The Supreme Court Is Already Deciding Major Election-Related Cases, With More Likely To Come

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