Donald Trump is already contesting the votes. While there is still a week until Election Day on November 5th. Indeed, Republicans on Monday asked the United States Supreme Court for an emergency order in Pennsylvania that could result in thousands of votes not being counted in this year’s elections in the contested state, reports the ‘Associated Press.
With just over a week until the election, Trump is asking the court to intervene in a dispute over provisional ballots cast by Pennsylvania voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected for failing to follow technical procedures of state law.
The state Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that election officials must count provisional ballots cast by voters whose mail-in ballots were spoiled because they arrived without the required secrecy envelopes .
The voting fight reached the Supreme Court on the same day that Virginia requested the justices’ intervention in a dispute over purging voter rolls.
Four years ago, the high court ruled on pandemic-inspired changes to voting rules in several states, including Pennsylvania.
In their Supreme Court lawsuit, the Republicans sought an order suspending the state court’s decision or requiring that provisional votes be separated and not included in the official vote count while the contest is legally fought.
Republicans argue that lawmakers did not provide for the ability for voters to vote again if they made mistakes on ballots sent by mail.
The secrecy envelopes keep ballots hidden while election workers open the sealed outer envelopes used to return completed packages. Voters must also sign and date the outer envelopes. Pennsylvania voters have requested 2 million mail-in ballots so far.
Election mailbox fires in Oregon and Washington
Police in the states of Oregon and Washington, in the northwest of the United States, are investigating this Monday the fire of several electoral mailboxes which burned with hundreds of early voting ballots a little over ‘a week before the elections, reports Eph.
Police in Portland, Oregon, announced the opening of an investigation after discovering “an incendiary device inside a ballot box on the sidewalk in the Central City neighborhood” last night.
“Only three ballots were damaged and the Department of Elections will contact these three voters so they can receive replacement ballots,” Multnomah County Elections Director Tim Scott said in a statement.
A similar event was reported shortly after in Vancouver, Washington, where an early voting ballot box was “smoking and on fire”, Metropolitan Police said.
Images shared on social media show several officers attempting to put out the flames while attempting to retrieve hundreds of ballots dropped inside the mailbox. Some of them appear to be completely burned, although at the moment the exact number of voices affected is unknown.
Authorities do not know if the two incidents, which occurred within hours of each other, are linked, and so far no arrests or anyone responsible for these events have been reported.
These incidents occur eight days before the November 5 elections and are not an isolated event: on October 24, officers arrested two people accused of setting fire to a mailbox containing early voting ballots in different suburbs in the area Metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona.
Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous, is key to determining who wins in the state, where Vice President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are virtually tied.
