Associate Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito ordered all of the county election boards in Pennsylvania to segregate all late-arrival ballots from the rest of the mail-in ballots and to keep them separated when the voting is conducted in a Friday night ruling.
Earlier Friday, the Pennsylvania Republican Party had called upon the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a case related to Pennsylvania's own Supreme Court, allowing the extension of the counting of mail-in ballots to three days after Election Day.
The ballots had to be postmarked by the time polls closed on Tuesday, and the party asked the highest court in the land to order that those ballots be “segregated” and not counted at this time.
"All county boards of election are hereby ordered, pending further order of the Court, to comply with the following guidance provided by the Secretary of the Commonwealth on October 28 and November 1, namely, (1) that all ballots received by mail after 8:00 p.m. on November 3 be segregated and kept ‘in a secure, safe, and sealed container separate from other voted ballots,’ and (2) that all such ballots, if counted, shall be counted separately," Alito said.
He added: "Until today, this Court was not informed that the guidance issued on October 28, which had an important beating on the question where to order special treatment of the ballots in question, had been modified. The application received today also informs the Court that neither the applicant not the Secretary has been able to verify that all bards are complying with the Secretary’s guidance, which, it is alleged, is not legally binding on them."
The move came as President Trump launched a number of lawsuits in battleground states nationwide and as apparent election winner Joe Biden has slowly expanded his narrow lead in a case that remains too close to call officially. Trump campaign lawyers have repeatedly urged the Supreme Court to take up the Pennsylvania case this week.
“Republican Party of Pennsylvania has filed a petition for a writ of certiorari asking this Court to resolve the important questions of federal law implicated by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s 4–3 decision extending the General Assembly’s Election Day received-by deadline and mandating a presumption of timeliness for non-postmarked ballots,” the GOP told the Supreme Court on Friday.
“In particular, RPP asks the Court to order Respondents Secretary of State Boockvar and the county boards of elections to log, to segregate, and otherwise not to take any action related to any ballots that arrive after the General Assembly’s Election Day received-by deadline but before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s judicially extended deadline," it continued. "Given the results of the November 3, 2020 general election, the vote in Pennsylvania may well determine the next President of the United States — and it is currently...
Read the Original Article on Source Page
#Supreme #Court #orders #Pennsylvanias #late #arrival #mailin #ballots #set
0 Post a Comment:
Post a Comment