The Supreme Court rejected a request from Republicans asking it to block a lower court ruling that gave Pennsylvania voters access to provisional ballots if they botched their mail-in ballots, potentially opening up the battleground state to thousands of votes that would not have been cast if the Supreme Court sided with the GOP—as the court faces an anticipated slew of last-minute cases over state voting rules before Election Day.
Demonstrators gather in front of the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on December 7, 2022.
The Republican National Committee asked the Supreme Court on Monday to block a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling allowing voters to cast provisional ballots if their mail-in ballots have errors, like lacking a signature or date on an envelope.
The Supreme Court denied the request Friday, saying in a filing the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision concerns just two votes made in Pennsylvania’s months-old primary and that staying the court’s ruling would not result in “any binding obligation” on the Pennsylvania officials “responsible for the conduct of this year’s election.”
The ruling comes after the court took up a matter concerning Virginia voting, as Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares asked the Supreme Court on Monday to nullify a lower court ruling that blocked the state from carrying out a purge of its voter rolls to remove 1,600 alleged noncitizens, which the federal government noted also resulted in U.S. citizens being removed in error.
Justices sided with the state Wednesday in a 6-3 decision, throwing out the lower court ruling and allowing Virginia to move forward with the voter purge—not offering any explanation for the decision and only noting that liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson would have denied Virginia’s request.
The Justice Department had argued removing the voters is unlawful because it was done too close to Election Day, as federal law bars states from removing voters from voter rolls less than 90 days before an election, and lower federal district and appeals courts sided with the federal government, ordering Virginia to restore voters to the voter rolls.
It remains to be seen how many more disputes the high court will be asked to take up before Election Day.
Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—who suspended his campaign and endorsed former President Donald Trump—also asked the court to weigh in on his candidacy, requesting that his name be taken off the ballot in Michigan and Wisconsin despite voting already being underway. The court denied those requests on Tuesday, leaving Kennedy on the states’ ballots.
If and how the Supreme Court could affect the election. Trump and his allies asked the court in 2020 to take up a series of post-election disputes challenging President Joe Biden’s win, as the ex-president fought in court to try and overturn the election results. The Supreme Court uniformly rejected all of those challenges, but it remains to be seen how the 6-3 conservative court will act if asked to weigh in on any post-election challenges again this cycle. Justices already gave Trump a win ahead of the general election by swatting down efforts by Democrats to disqualify him from state ballots under the 14th Amendment, ruling states cannot remove federal candidates.
The Supreme Court seemingly gave itself more leeway to shape states’ election rules with its 2023 ruling in voting case Moore v. Harper, Vox notes. The court struck down a legal theory in that case that Trump and his allies tried to use to overturn the 2020 election, which claimed state legislators should have widespread authority to determine election rules—a power Trump wanted state lawmakers to use to reject their states’ election results and declare Trump the winner. That being said, justices also ruled state courts can’t oppose state legislators’ election rules in a way that “exceed[s] the bounds of ordinary judicial review.” The court didn’t clarify exactly what that means in practice and what those bounds of ordinary review are, but Vox notes the ruling could make it easier for the Supreme Court to overrule state courts and side with state legislators, if the justices believe those courts have acted improperly.
Both Republicans and Democrats have brought dozens of lawsuits challenging voting rules ahead of Election Day, particularly as Trump and his allies have sowed distrust in election results and the electoral process. The RNC has launched a massive “election integrity” effort targeting voting practices the party believes will enable voter fraud—even as evidence shows such fraud is exceedingly rare and there is no evidence of widespread electoral fraud in recent elections. As GOP-led states have tightened voting rules in response to Trump’s fraud claims, Democrats have also filed numerous lawsuits seeking to expand voter access. While legal battles have been playing out in the courts for months, legal rulings have ramped up ahead of Election Day, and Marc Elias, a voting rights attorney aligned with the Democratic Party, said Sunday 199 challenges remain pending in 40 states.