The Republican National Committee asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its appeal of an October 2024 Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision allowing voters to cast provisional ballots on Election Day if their timely received mail-in ballots are disqualified due to a technical mistake. Via Democracy Docket:
The RNC and Pennsylvania Republican Party’s Jan. 21 cert petition invokes the discredited independent state legislature (ISL) theory, which posits the U.S. Constitution’s Elections and Electors Clauses grant state legislatures exclusive authority to regulate federal elections without court intervention.
Although the U.S. Supreme Court previously rejected the far-fetched constitutional argument in its 2022 Moore v. Harper decision — and just recently declined to take up an ISL-based appeal out of Montana — the RNC maintains that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court “transgressed” the ordinary bounds of judicial review and thereby “usurped” the authority of the Pennsylvania Legislature.
In the particular case at hand, the Republican petitioners assert that Pennsylvania’s highest court unconstitutionally exceeded its authority when it affirmed that voters have a lawful right to vote provisionally at the polls as a “failsafe” if their mail-in ballots are rejected for missing an inner secrecy envelope.
