On April 29, 2024, ACLU-PA, Public Interest Law Center, and the law firm Dechert LLP sued Butler County on behalf of two voters whose provisional ballots were rejected by the board of elections in the 2024 Pennsylvania primary election. The voters voted provisionally because they were notified that their mail ballots were missing the inner secrecy envelope.
The county allowed voters with other errors, such as a missing signature or handwritten date on the return envelope, to cure their mistakes and submit corrected mail ballot envelopes. The county denied the same opportunity for voters who forgot the secrecy envelope.
On August 16, 2024, the Butler County Court of Common Pleas ruled against the voters, saying that the issue should be resolved by the state legislature.
On September 5, 2024, a panel of the Commonwealth Court ruled that the county did not have a legal basis for disqualifying provisional ballots from mail voters who forgot their secrecy envelope and ordered their ballots from the 2024 primary to be counted.
On October 23, 2024, a majority of the justices of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed the Commonwealth Court's ruling, requiring counties to count provisional ballots from voters who make disqualifying errors on their mail ballot return packets.
On November 1, the United States Supreme Court denied the RNC's motion for a stay, leaving the state Supreme Court ruling in place.
