Vicky Arias, FISM News

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On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court nullified a lower court’s ruling that permitted the counting of flawed mail-in ballots in a Pennsylvania county judge election.

The ruling comes in response to Republican David Ritter challenging the counting of 257 faulty mail-in votes that led to him losing a judge appointment by 5 votes. Ritter was up by a 71-vote margin over his opponent Zachary Cohen before the votes in question were counted. According to Pennsylvania state law, mail-in ballots must be signed and dated on the ballot’s envelope. In 257 instances, this was not done, rendering the votes invalid, according to the law.

Ritter challenged the counting of the 257 ballots in court and, initially, lost when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd District ruled that the votes should, in fact, be counted, despite the Pennsylvania law. The appeals court based its decision on the federal Civil Rights Act, which “bars states from denying [an individual] the right to vote based on an error or omission that is not ‘material’ to the voter’s qualifications.”

The case made it to the Supreme Court and has been seen as a test case of how mail-in ballots will be seen by the high court. Initially, in June the Supreme Court rejected an emergency appeal and allowed the appeals court decision to stand.

At the time, Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito disagreed with their fellow justices on the decision to not grant an immediate ruling. In his dissent, Justice Alito wrote that the decision of the appeals court was “very likely wrong [and] if left undisturbed, it could well affect the outcome of the fall elections.”

The dissenting opinion stated the appeals court incorrectly applied Civil Rights law, as no one had been denied their right to vote in this instance.

When a mail-in ballot is not counted because it was not filled out correctly, the voter is not denied ‘the right to vote.’ Rather, that individual’s vote is not counted because he or she did not follow the rules for casting a ballot. A registered voter who does not follow the rules may be unable to cast a vote for any number of reasons…A voter may go to the wrong polling place and may not have time to reach the right place before it is too late. A voter who casts a mail-in ballot may send it to the wrong address. A State’s refusal to count the votes of these voters does not constitute a denial of ‘the right to vote.’ Even the most permissive voting rules must contain some requirements, and the failure to follow those rules constitutes the forfeiture of the right to vote, not the denial of that right.

After the court’s decision to ultimately allow the counting of the disputed votes, Ritter conceded the race to his Democrat opponent on June 21.

However, in July, Ritter filed a new motion to the Supreme Court. This time, instead of asking the court to block the counting of the disputed votes, Ritter petitioned it to “rule as moot,” or nullify the initial finding of the lower court altogether. In essence, Ritter wanted the Supreme Court to wipe away the initial appeals court finding which allowed the disputed votes to be counted. 

Ritter argued that by allowing the original decision to stand, a precedent would be set and potentially exploited in future election cases. According to Yahoo Finance, “Ritter told the Supreme Court that unless the 3rd Circuit ruling was wiped off the books, it would allow undated mail-in ballots to be counted in future elections in Pennsylvania and would ‘threaten to invalidate countless regulations of mail-in voting’ nationwide. Pennsylvania Republican legislators echoed Ritter’s warning.”

The Supreme Court agreed with Ritter this time around, finding to nullify the appeals court decision to allow dateless votes to be counted. Though this will not change the result of the election, it will help to more clearly define how incomplete mail-in ballots should be treated in future elections.

The decision is very timely given the upcoming November elections in which Republicans hope to seize control of Congress.

In a poll from November 2020 researchers from Northwestern, Harvard, Northeastern, and Rutgers Universities found that “38% of Americans lack[ed] confidence in the fairness of the presidential election.” Many critics, particularly those on the right, have pointed to loose election standards as reason for this concern, noting that without uniform regulations elections can be manipulated for sordid gain.