On Wednesday, Oct. 23, the state Supreme Court ruled on a Butler County case with statewide implications for the upcoming election.

The court ruled that two Butler County voters should have been allowed to cast provisional ballots during the April primary when their mail-in ballots were rejected because they weren't inside a secrecy envelope.

The two had their provisional ballots rejected, appealed to the Court of Common Pleas, lost and appealed to Commonwealth Court, where they won. The Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of Pennsylvania appealed that decision to the state Supreme Court, and the county joined.

The court's decision examined both the facts of the case and the legal arguments made by both sides. In the end, however, their answer was simple, because — despite claims of questions about what state lawmakers intended or confusion over the way different statutes interact — the issue is quite simple.

Two voters tried to vote, and their ballots weren't accepted. That is the situation that provisional ballots were designed to solve.

As the justices noted, a ballot is void if it isn't accepted, and therefore that voter hasn't voted yet.

"Provisional balloting procedures, as enacted in the Election Code and incorporating the mandate of (the 2002 Help America Vote Act), are designed in a way to assure access to the right to vote while also preventing double voting," Justice Christine Donohue wrote in the majority opinion.

Voting and the right to vote is at the very heart of our nation, something we should all know quite well as Election Day approaches.

There was no question about whether the two voters at the heart of the suit had submitted multiple ballots — they hadn't. And the underlying reason for rejecting their provisional ballot was they had made an error when voting.

The 4-3 majority on the court rejected that idea.

"It is difficult to discern any principled reading of the Free and Fair Election Clause that would allow the disenfranchisement of voters as punishment for failure to conform to the mail-in voting requirements when voters properly availed themselves of the provisional voting mechanism," the opinion reads.

Likewise, the justices rejected election security arguments because there is no question that the case doesn't involve people trying to vote multiple times, but, rather, to vote once.

"While Appellants and their amici argue that 'election integrity' mandates that Electors’ provisional ballots not be counted, we are at a loss to identify what honest voting principle is violated by recognizing the validity of one ballot cast by one voter," the opinion reads. "If Appellants presume that the General Assembly intended to disqualify the provisional ballot of a voter who failed to effectively vote by mail in order to punish that voter, we caution that such a construction is not reconcilable with the right of franchise. We must presume that the General Assembly did not intend an unconstitutional interpretation of its enactments."

It's good this case is settled before Election Day, and the Supreme Court made the right decision by making sure that everyone who is eligible to vote has a chance to do so.

— JK