Pennsylvania Republicans win Supreme Court order to enforce separation of late-arriving ballots
by Josh Gerstein
Republicans in Pennsylvania won an order from the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday evening requiring local officials to separate out late-arriving ballots until the legal controversy over them is resolved.
However, the order from Justice Samuel Alito did not grant a GOP request that those ballots go uncounted. Instead, he said those ballots could be tallied “if counted separately.”
Watch this video where John Solomon reports that the FBI is interviewing an election official from Pittsburgh who is saying that they were "ordered" to back date ballots so they would count - debunking the corrupt PA Attoney General's assertion that hardly any late ballots have come in:
The two-page order was unusual in that it came from Alito alone. Most emergency applications of public significance are addressed by the full court, although particularly urgent matters are sometimes acted on by a single justice while the other justices are later asked to weigh in. Alito followed that latter course, saying he was referring the issue to his colleagues for further action.
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Alito’s order in the first voting-related dispute to reach the high court since Election Day also seemed to take a swipe at Pennsylvania officials for not officially notifying the justices that a directive that Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar sent out on the issue late last month was updated four days later.
“Until today, this Court was not informed that the guidance issued on October 28, which had an important bearing on the question whether to order special treatment of the ballots in question, had been modified,” wrote Alito, an appointee of President George W. Bush.
While the order is a win of sorts for President Donald Trump in the barrage of litigation he has endorsed to try to wrestle a victory in the presidential race, the practical impact may be limited or perhaps nonexistent.
Indeed, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said on Friday night that the order was actually a rebuff for Republicans because it would lead to no change in the status quo.
“This is a third rejection by the Court in this case — it represents no change in the counting of votes in Pennsylvania,” Shapiro wrote on Twitter.
Democrats responded in a filing overnight that didn't object to Alito's order but urged the court to go no further.
Boockvar said on Thursday that all such ballots had been segregated already and that, in any event, they weren’t likely to be numerous enough to affect the outcome of the presidential contest in the state, where Vice President Joe Biden has pulled ahead.
Click Here to Watch the Video of an Erie, PA postal worker stating that the Post Office was intentionally back dating late illegal ballots to November 3rd so they would be counted as legal. This could explain why Boockvar claims so few late ballots have come in Right?
Spokespeople for Shapiro and Boockvar did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Alito’s complaint that officials failed to inform the court about the secretary’s Nov. 1 order, which greenlighted counting of the ballots arriving during the three-day extension.
