News & Brews November 4, 2024
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Undated mail-in ballots will not count this election
Hopefully laying to rest for now a recurring question that threatened to cause chaos on Tuesday and beyond, the Pa. Supreme Court “doubled down Friday on its previous rulings that undated mail ballots should not be counted … staying an order from a lower court that had injected uncertainty into” the election, the Inquirer reports. Notably, the ruling was unanimous. The story continues, “While the Supreme Court has yet to take up the merits [of the case] … it reiterated guidance it issued earlier this month that it would ‘neither impose nor countenance substantial alterations to existing laws and procedures during the pendency of an ongoing election.’” And Justice Kevin Dougherty had some words for the lower court, writing, “We said those carefully chosen words only weeks ago. Yet they apparently were not heard in the Commonwealth Court, the very court where the bulk of election litigation unfolds. We said what we meant and meant what we said.”
Pa. must count provisional ballots if mail-in ballots rejected
And in another court ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday “left in place a state Supreme Court ruling that elections officials must count provisional ballots cast by voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected,” the AP reports. “As of Thursday, about 9,000 ballots out of more than 1.6 million returned have arrived at elections offices around Pennsylvania lacking a secrecy envelope, a signature or a handwritten date, according to state records.” The ruling means that voters who cast these ballots are permitted to vote via provisional ballot on Election Day.
On election results, it’s not just ‘who’ but ‘when’
Aside from “who” will win the election, the question a lot of folks are asking is “when” will we know the election results? Well, to be frank, I don’t know. But FiveThirtyEight has created a super nifty interactive map showing the share of the vote that was reported hour by hour in 2022 in each state. If you need to take your mind off of polling and ads and non-stop news coverage, check out the graphics here.
Harris, Trump to make final stops in Pa.
Pa., Pa., and more Pa. The AP reports that VP Kamala Harris will spend all of today in the commonwealth, with stops including Allentown and Philly. Former President Trump, meanwhile, has two stops planned in Pa. today, one in Reading and one in Pittsburgh.
Democrats oppose opportunity scholarships
Susquehanna International Group Managing Director and Co-Founder Jeff Yass observes in the City Journal the irony that Democrats, who “once helped to popularize” school choice policies, now have a party platform that “explicitly rejects a time-tested and bipartisan school-choice policy: opportunity scholarships.”