The state supreme court ruled in mid-September that mail ballots should be counted if received within three days after Election Day, if they’re postmarked by November 3.
Lawyers for the top Republicans in the Pennsylvania state Senate on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stop an order from the state’s highest court allowing mail-in ballots received three days after Election Day to be counted if they are postmarked by November 3. The Supreme Court’s response could decide whether a significant number of ballots are counted in a key battleground state that was decided in 2016 by razor-thin margins. Democrats welcomed several of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s election rulings in mid-September, including the extension of the mail-in ballot deadline, the expulsion of the Green Party from the state’s presidential ballot and a refusal to meet Republicans‘ request that out-of-county poll watchers be allowed. But Republicans won on so-called „naked ballots,“ or ballots lacking an inner secrecy envelope, which the court ruled wouldn’t be counted.
