The ruling comes after election workers in the Republican-controlled county refused to tell voters whether their mail-in ballot would be counted in April’s primary election.
All election equipment used by Pennsylvania counties — ranging from ballot-marking devices used for some in-person voting to machines that tabulate mail and absentee ballots — is put through a pre-election stress test known as logic and accuracy testing. This is how it works.
The audit comes one year after Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration followed two dozen other states in offering automatic voter registration at driver’s licensing centers.
Voters elsewhere in the state who have already registered to vote by mail in the November election should begin receiving their mail ballots early in October.
The state Supreme Court took up the appeal from a Commonwealth Court decision that said Butler County had to count provisional ballots from two voters who had received automatic emails before the April primary telling them their mail-in votes had been rejected because they were so-called "naked ballots" that weren't enclosed in the provided secrecy envelope.
Following some confusion over a state law requiring counties to begin processing voters' applications for mail ballots 50 days before an election, state officials announced Wednesday that counties are still in the process of preparing mail ballots for voters.
Commonwealth Court two weeks ago had halted enforcement of the handwritten dates on exterior envelopes. The Supreme Court's reversal of that decision raises the prospect that thousands of ballots that arrive in time might get thrown out in a key swing state in what is expected to be a close presidential contest.
A state court decided Thursday that voters in Pennsylvania can cast provisional ballots in place of mail-in ballots that are rejected for a garden-variety mistake they made when they returned it.
Patients who happen to find themselves in Lankenau Medical Center just outside Philadelphia on Election Day can still cast their vote.
A state court Friday halted enforcement of a requirement that voters include accurate, handwritten dates on envelopes used to submit mail-in ballots, a ruling likely to keep several thousand Pennsylvania votes from being thrown out in the November election.
