The national Republican Party is planning to challenge provisional ballots cast by Pennsylvania voters, a lawyer wrote in a letter to county elections officials Wednesday.
The Republican National Committee “intends to challenge the provisional ballots cast by voters who also cast an absentee or mail-in ballot, even if such absentee or mail-in ballot has been deemed unable to be counted under applicable law,” Kathleen A. Gallagher, a Republican election lawyer in Western Pennsylvania, wrote in the letter.
Provisional ballots are paper ballots used when the eligibility of the voter or vote isn’t immediately clear at the polling place. There are thousands of provisional votes counted statewide, and the number of provisional ballots has increased in recent years with the rise of mail voting.
Some voters submit mail ballots with errors, such as a lack of a signature on the outer envelope, that will lead the vote to be rejected. While some of those voters are able to “cure” those flaws in advance, others go to their polling places to use provisional ballots. That’s the Pennsylvania Department of State’s advice for voters’ final option: Because the flawed mail ballot will be rejected, the provisional ballot can then be counted.
But state law lists a series of reasons why “a provisional ballot shall not be counted,” and one of those reasons is if “the elector’s absentee ballot or mail-in ballot is timely received by a county board of elections.”…