Voters must be given provisional option if mail ballots get rejected, Pa. Supreme Court rules

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Pennsylvanians must be given the chance to vote on Election Day even if their mail ballots have been rejected because of a disqualifying mistake, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled. Voters who failed to correctly sign or date the return envelope or failed to use a secrecy envelope will have the opportunity to cast a provisional ballot on Election Day at a polling place and have it counted. The Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that Butler County’s Republican-majority election board must count provisional ballots that were cast by two voters after they learned their mail-in ballots were voided because they arrived without mandatory secrecy envelopes. Pennsylvania law requires voters to sign and date their ballot return envelopes and to place the ballot in an inner secrecy envelope before being placed in the return envelope, in order for the ballot to be counted. Thousands of ballots are rejected each election for these issues. Pennsylvania voters have so far applied for more than 1.9 million mail ballots. (Photo by Hannah Beier/Getty Images)