A Bucks County Common Pleas judge has dismissed two lawsuits seeking to overturn decisions by the Bucks County Board of Elections involving provisional ballots in the Nov. 5 general election.
But Judge Jordan Yeager also ruled in favor of a Republican petition Thursday, ordering the board not to count provisional ballots with a missing voter signature.
The court orders did not specify which vote totals were involved, but it appears they are 285 provisional ballots, a last resort for individuals whose eligibility to vote is challenged at the ballot box.
Voters line up to cast their ballots for the Tuesday, November 5, 2024 presidential election at the Northampton Municipal Building in Northampton.
Even more election news about 2024 Bucks County, others can’t count votes disputed in McCormick-Casey race: PA Supreme Court
Yeager’s orders mean that 160 of the disputed provisional ballots will be included in the final, certified election results due Nov. 25.
The Republican National Committee and newly elected U.S. Senator David McCormick asked the court to overturn the Board of Elections’ Nov. 14 decision to count provisional ballots that lack a voter’s signature on an affidavit, and ballots that lack the signatures of a election judge or minority inspector are missing.
Yeager overruled the BOE and ordered that ballots missing a voter’s signature not be counted in the final certified election totals.
But the judge upheld the BOE’s decision to count ballots when election officials failed to co-sign voters’ affidavits, citing McCormick and the RNC for failing to enforce any language in the election code identify that justified its rejection.
“We decline Mr. McCormick’s invitation to read something so important into the election code that it simply is not,” Yeager wrote in his order. “We are also concerned that such a ruling would effectively give county-level election officials the power to single-handedly disenfranchise voters.”
Yeager also rejected a challenge from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to reverse a BOE decision that threw out 76 provisional ballots that were missing a secrecy envelope, citing the law that “clearly and unequivocally” requires that a provisional ballot shall not be counted if the ballot does not contain an envelope. secrecy envelope.”
The court’s rulings had virtually no impact on Bucks County’s vote count in the McCormick-Casey battle for the U.S. Senate. Casey received about 1,200 more votes than McCormick in Bucks County on Nov. 5.
On Thursday, Casey, the state’s longest-serving senator, conceded to McCormick, ending one of the closest and most expensive Senate races in 2024.
McCormick defeated Casey by just over 16,300 votes. The vote margins led to a rare mandatory statewide recount, but it was unclear Friday whether the recount would take place.
Reporter Jo Ciavaglia can be reached at jciavaglia@gannett.com
This article originally appeared in Bucks County Courier Times: What provisional voting challenges has a Bucks County judge dismissed and upheld?
