Thousands of votes in Pennsylvania They risk being excluded from the battleground state’s presidential election count, as the Republican Party is asking the US. Supreme Court intervene in a dispute over voting procedures.

On Monday, eight days before Election Day, the Republican National Committee asked the Supreme Court of the United States to temporarily suspend a Pennsylvania Supreme Court Ruling which requires election workers to count provisional ballots even if a voter’s mail-in ballot violates mandatory requirements.

In the Commonwealth, election officials reject mail-in ballots that technically violate the state’s Election Code, such as those that do not contain a signature, date or secrecy envelope. If a voter’s mail-in ballot has one of these problems, they may receive a provisional ballot at their polling place on Election Day.

But under state code, provisional ballots should not be counted if a mail-in ballot is received on time.

In a 4-3 ruling last week, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court changed that rule, requiring election officials to count those provisional ballots even if the mail-in ballot lacks the required procedure.

republicans They were angry about the ruling, believing it had been handed down too close to Election Day and improperly preventing the state legislature from making decisions on election law.

“This holdup effectively creates a cure-all process for the errors of voting by mail, a process that everyone agrees the General Assembly has deliberately chosen not to create,” the Republicans wrote.

The U.S. Supreme Court typically does not get involved in issues involving state law unless they violate federal law or the Constitution. But in recent years, conservatives have pushed for the U.S. Supreme Court to issue a ruling that gives state legislatures the power to regulate federal elections instead of.

That fringe legal theory has been widely rejected, including by the United States Supreme Court.

However, the Republican National Committee is pushing the nation’s highest court to intervene in the recent Pennsylvania ruling.

The case originates in Butler County, where two voters sued their local board of elections after discovering their primary election provisional ballots were excluded due to errors on the mail-in ballot envelope.

In Pennsylvania, voters who use mail-in ballots must seal their ballot in a “secrecy” envelope that is placed inside a “declaration” envelope. This declaration envelope must be signed and dated.

But if the ballot sorting machine determines that the ballot does not contain a secrecy envelope, voters are told they can cast a provisional ballot at their polling place on Election Day.

It’s unclear how many ballots would be affected if the Supreme Court took the case and sided with the Republican National Committee, although it’s likely in the thousands.

The final outcome of the case has enormous consequences given that Pennsylvania is a key state that could determine the winner of the 2024 presidential election. Given how close national polls indicate there is between Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the election could be decided by just a few thousand voters.