A US Supreme Court ruling decided to overrule an appeals court that forced Pennsylvania to allow mail-in ballots with no date, which is contrary to election integrity. This reversal can lessen votes for entities intent on subverting the elections via cheating, causing election integrity.
Reversal of Court Decision on Mail-in Ballots
Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown chose to support David Ritter, a failed Republican candidate for a judgeship, declaring the verdict overturned and remanding the case to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit with instructions to be dismissed as redundant, reported the Epoch Times.
They still decided to throw out such a US 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals' judgment, which permitted the tallying of mail-in ballots in the race that Ritter had wanted to eliminate since voters did not write the date on the ballot papers. He ended up losing his 2021 bid to represent the Lehigh County Court of Common Pleas after 257 mail-in ballots that didn't have dates were recorded.
Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers and conservatives submitted amicus briefs and said the 3rd Circuit court's decision challenged the honesty of the 2022 midterm elections. But the Supreme Court's intervention on Tuesday implies that the 3rd Circuit ruling cannot serve as a justification in the three states supported by this regional federal appellate court Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, to enable the tallying of mail-in ballots with minor flaws like the voter has failed to enter the date.
Rescinding the US Supreme Court decision doesn't change Ritter's crushing defeat in his race, noted AP News.
Ballots Counted in the Former Court Ruling
Relatively early this year, the court denied Ritter's attempt to prevent the tallying of ballots that lacked dates. Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas all expressed their dissent. Days before that, a panel on the 3rd Circuit instructed the tallying of the unattributed votes.
The division bench decision, according to Alito, "could very well impact the outcome of the election results this year as the electorate heads to the polls on Nov. 8 in midterm elections in which Republican politicians are attempting to wrest control of Congress from the Democrats.", citing US News.
One of his worries is that if the rules are not followed, a vote won't be counted, and the appeals court's decision will be gravely flawed.
This same 3rd Circuit has adjudicated that nullifying the undated postal votes will indeed infringe a requirement of a groundbreaking 1964 federal law termed the Civil Rights Act that seeks to ensure that slight ballot mistakes need not deny somebody the ability to vote.
Nevertheless, Pennsylvania rules mandate the voting public to start writing the date on the outer envelope of their mail-in ballot.
Well before the Supreme Court's Tuesday decision, Republican state Sen. David Argall informed The Morning Call that there would be many issues that will come up during the midterm elections and mentioned other provisions, along with the controversial Act 77 revamp, which was implemented in 2019 that made widespread vote-by-mail feasible in Pennsylvania.
The US Supreme Court ruled that mail-in ballots with no dates on the outer envelope threaten election integrity.
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