I know lots of people are stressed out about the election so I'm going to assume this is a question asked in good faith.
If you're seriously not understanding the case, try understanding the best argument each side made. Unfortunately we don't have any of that in front of us here.
The NPR article you linked does a couple of things that set off red flags for me. Quick tutorial in media literacy:
Since 2019, all Pennsylvania voters have been able to cast ballots by mail, but to have their mail ballots counted, they have to follow strict rules laid out in the state election code. One of those rules requires voters to place their ballot into a “secrecy envelope” before placing it into the mailing envelope. Without the secrecy envelope, the ballot is considered “naked” and will not be counted.
Under a statewide notification system, voters get an email telling them that their naked ballot has been invalidated and that “you can go to your polling place on election day and cast a provisional ballot.” Most counties follow that practice, but some, like Butler County, Pa., do not.
The first paragraph describes Pennsylvania law. Critical words indicating that and what the law says are in bold. Notably, NPR is not quoting Pennsylvania law for those critical pieces. The only quoted words in this paragraph are "secrecy envelope" and "naked." It's not clear from the article if those words appear in the relevant law though or are just being rendered in quotes for purposes of defining terms.
The second paragraph describes what Pennsylvania has been doing in practice. There's no statement indicating that Pennsylvania law requires or prohibits any/some of the described practices. Indeed, the text I italicized seems intended to deceive the reader that Pennsylvania law
requires offering provisional ballots when a naked mail in ballot is rejected. As we'll see, this is incorrect.
Which is the law in most states that offer mail in ballots. Think about it, it practically
has to be.
Most (all?) states have no guarantee that a given voter's mail in ballot will be processed before election day. If a voter mails in a ballot and goes to the polls, that's two votes a person, and almost automatically a crime. But let's assume this is the rarer case where a voter sent in a mail in ballot, and knows that their ballot was rejected, and it's still before election day.
So we can have provisional ballots. If a particular voter gets into a particular snafu, state law could provide that such voters are entitled to submit a provisional ballot - one that is counted instead of the voter's mail in ballot. A provisional ballot obviously isn't a general right, otherwise everyone would just double vote, 'just to be sure'. So there has to be a precondition laid out in law that allows for a provisional ballot while still preventing double voting. Bear in mind, the
only way to do this in practice is to set aside the affected mail in ballot while retaining that ballot's voter identification - at least temporarily breaking the secrecy of the ballot for the affected vote - so that the voter can be qualified/notified to submit a provisional ballot.
Here's a comparatively and uncharacteristically decent WaPo article on this case
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/01/supreme-court-pennsylvania-ballots/
It still doesn't tell us enough, but at least we have some more details. We get a whole one sentence from the position of the evil Republicans: "Weeks after mail voting began in Pennsylvania — and less than two weeks before Election Day — a sharply divided 4-3 Pennsylvania Supreme Court departed from the plain terms of the Election Code to dramatically change the rules governing mail voting"
Let's not so generously assume they're not lying in their briefs (lawyers get disbarred for that). This tells me a couple of things. Pennsylvania law
required rejecting the affected mail in ballots. Further, Pennsylvania law did not provide for provisional ballots when such a rejection occurred (permitting Butler County's practice).
So with all of that out of the way, one could
start to understand the case
. No thanks to NPR.
Here's my supposition: the statewide election authority that made those emails to voters decided to step into the breach and offer provisional ballots
outside Pennsylvania law. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court just made shit up to permit it. Indeed, to force it in this case of that particular county (Butler) that
didn't implement that made up, non-legally-prescribed provisional ballot remedy.
Well I agree it's ridiculous, from the opposite position. Those four PA SC votes were likely lawless. They ruled that a bad ballot is
void rather than an entity under Pennsylvania law, for the first time afaik. That's probably going to make mischief from other provisions of Pennsylvania law that necessarily treat such ballots as something other than nonexistent (i.e. invalid). Off the cuff example: remember that double voting crime I described in the context of mail in ballots+in person votes? How will you convict a voter under PA's election code for double voting if they send in a "naked" mail in ballot AND vote in person? Under this ruling, they voted
once, in person, the other one is void! How about convicting them if they sent in a 'clothed' ballot and testify that they 'couldn't remember' if they included the secrecy envelope, so they went on to vote in person as well? Remember, a clothed ballot
would be counted. And it would be counted in a way that
separated it from the voter's identification.
Finally, here's my confirmed supposition: here's where you can read the briefs
https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/24a408.html.
Want to know why the PA Supreme Court did that invalid>void thing? Here's a dead on statute quoted by (losing) evil Republicans in their application:
“[a] provisional ballot shall not be counted if the elector’s absentee or mail-in ballot is timely received by a county board of elections.”25 Pa. Stat. § 3050(a.4)(5)(ii)(F) (emphasis added). Thus, a county board must not count any provisional ballot cast by a voter whose mail ballot was “timely received” before the deadline of 8 p.m. on Election Day.
