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      Supreme Court Rejects Bid to Block Count of Some Pennsylvania Provisional Ballots

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      Republicans had sought to block the counting of provisional ballots by voters whose mail-in ballots were deemed invalid. Democrats celebrated the ruling as a win in a crucial state.The Supreme Court cleared the way on Friday for some voters in Pennsylvania whose mail-in ballots had been deemed invalid to cast provisional ballots in person, rejecting an appeal by Republicans not to count such votes.Democrats immediately celebrated the decision, which like in many such emergency petitions was unsigned and gave no reasoning, as a victory in a state crucial to each party’s presidential and Senate hopes. It could affect thousands of mail-in ballots in a contest where the latest polls show Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump virtually tied.The ruling was one in a string of court victories for Democrats, whose voters are more likely to use mail ballots and were therefore more likely to have had their votes tossed out if Republicans had succeeded in the case.“In Pennsylvania and across the country, Trump and his allies are trying to make it harder for your vote to count, but our institutions are stronger than his shameful attacks,” the Harris campaign said in a statement after the ruling. “Today’s decision confirms that for every eligible voter, the right to vote means the right to have your vote counted.”The Republican National Committee was “disappointed” in the court’s ruling, a spokeswoman said.In a brief statement attached to the court’s order, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote that the case was “a matter of considerable importance.” But he said the justices had no way to give the Republicans what they were asking for — a statewide block on allowing these provisional ballots.Only Butler County elections officials were parties to the case, he wrote, which meant the justices could not force elections officials in other counties to block those ballots. He was joined by two other conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judge Allows Unusual G.O.P. Strategy to Pump Money Into Senate Races

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      Democrats had claimed that the advertising strategy may have violated federal election laws establishing strict limits on spending by national party committees to aid individual candidates.A federal judge ruled on Friday that Senate Republicans may continue to pump tens of millions of dollars into key swing state races in the final days of the 2024 campaign by employing an unusual advertising strategy that Democrats had claimed was potentially illegal.By reclassifying campaign ads as fund-raising appeals, Republicans have been able to avoid strict limits Congress has placed on spending by national party committees to aid individual candidates, helping to offset a significant fund-raising deficit they face in states with critical Senate races, such as Arizona and Pennsylvania.House Democrats’ campaign arm sued the Federal Election Commission for failing to stop the Republicans and sought to either ban the practice or clear the way to use it themselves.But Judge Randolph D. Moss, of the U.S. District Court in Washington, wrote Friday that he was “unpersuaded” to outlaw a practice that the commission had not. He said Democratic and Republican campaign committees — those that support Senate and House candidates — are “all on an even playing field” and the lack of action taken by the Federal Election Commission had not tilted it.His ruling could give Republicans a last-minute boost in the fierce contest for the Senate, where they are favored to pick up the one or two seats they need to regain control of the chamber, but where polls show that several races are close.Sean Cooksey, the Republican chairman of the Federal Election Commission, also welcomed the ruling. “This is a huge win for the rule of law and political speech!” he wrote on social media.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Could the Vote Be Contested Again? 5 Threats to a Smooth Election

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      Litigation, disinformation and battles over certifying the vote all have the potential to complicate the process.For the past four years, Donald J. Trump has been proclaiming the American electoral process “rigged,” decrying events that displease him as “election interference” and laying the groundwork to contest another loss at the polls.It follows the playbook from his loss in 2020, when the former president weaponized disinformation and exploited perceived weak points or vagueness in election law in an attempt to overturn results.At the same time, lawmakers and election officials have been trying to shore up the electoral system against another potential attempt to subvert a presidential election. Federal laws regarding the Electoral College were changed. There is stronger case law to knock down specious legal claims, and Mr. Trump is no longer sitting in the Oval Office with the levers of government in his grasp.But even with a national effort to reinforce the country’s democratic institutions, a smooth path to picking the next president still requires the good faith buy-in of its citizens, candidates and political parties. Absent that, there are a number of ways that the next few weeks — both before and after the polls close — could be rocky.Here is a look at some possibilities:Elizabeth Young, an assistant state attorney general representing Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, argued an election-related case before members of Georgia’s Supreme Court last month.Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated PressA flood of litigationAlready, more than 187 election-related lawsuits have been filed, including at least 116 seeking some restrictions to voting and 68 filed by those seeking to expand or protect voting, according to data from Democracy Docket, a Democratic-aligned group that tracks election cases. The cases represent an extraordinary inundation of litigation before the election.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Secret Files in Election Case Show How Judges Limited Trump’s Privilege

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      The partly unsealed rulings, orders and transcripts open a window on a momentous battle over grand jury testimony that played out in secret, creating important precedents about executive privilege.Court documents unsealed on Monday shed new light on a legal battle over which of former President Donald J. Trump’s White House aides had to testify before a grand jury in Washington that charged him with plotting to overturn the 2020 election, showing how judges carved out limits on executive privilege.The trove — including motions, judicial orders and transcripts of hearings in Federal District Court in Washington — did not reveal significant new details about Mr. Trump’s efforts to cling to power. But it did open a window on important questions of presidential power and revealed how judges grew frustrated with Mr. Trump’s longstanding strategy of seeking to delay accountability for his attempts to overturn his defeat to Joseph R. Biden Jr.The documents also created important — if not binding — precedents about the scope of executive privilege that could influence criminal investigations in which a current or former president instructs subordinates not to testify before a grand jury based on his constitutional authority to keep certain internal executive branch communications secret.Starting in the summer of 2022, and continuing with the appointment of Jack Smith as special counsel later that year, the Justice Department undertook a wide-ranging and extraordinary effort to compel grand jury testimony from several close aides to Mr. Trump. Prosecutors believed the aides had critical information about the former president’s attempts to overturn the results of the election.The effort, which ended in the spring of the following year, was largely intended to obtain firsthand accounts from key figures who had used claims of executive privilege and other legal protections to avoid testifying to investigators on the House committee that examined the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the events leading up to it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tommy Robinson, U.K. Anti-immigrant Agitator, Jailed for Contempt of Court

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      The founder of the English Defence League was sentenced to 18 months for ignoring a court order to stop making false claims about a teenage Syrian refugee.Tommy Robinson, Britain’s best-known far-right and anti-immigrant agitator, was sentenced on Monday to 18 months in prison for defying a court order by repeating false claims about a teenage Syrian refugee who had successfully sued him for libel.Mr. Robinson appeared in court and admitted to breaching a High Court order in 2021 that barred him from repeating the libelous allegationsIn announcing the sentence, Justice Jeremy Johnson said that no one was above the law.“The breaches were not accidental or negligent or merely reckless,” he said, according to Reuters. “Each breach of the injunction was a considered and planned and deliberate and direct and flagrant breach of the court’s order.”Mr. Robinson, 41, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was the founder of the English Defence League, a nationalist, anti-Muslim group known for its violent street protests in the late 2000s and 2010s.He had returned to Britain last week after several months abroad and turned himself in on Friday at a police station in Kent ahead of his court hearing in Woolwich, a town in southeastern London.The sentencing came two days after thousands of his supporters took to the streets of London for a rally that prompted a large counter demonstration. Both events were mostly peaceful, with a heavy police presence and just a handful of arrests.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Musk Wins Appeal Over Tweet He Had to Delete About Union Push

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      The Fifth Circuit court ruled that the 2018 post was protected speech. It also vacated an order to reinstate a pro-union Tesla worker who was fired.A federal appeals court handed Elon Musk a victory in a freedom-of-speech case on Friday by overturning an earlier ruling in a dispute between the billionaire and the National Labor Relations Board.In March last year, three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans affirmed the board’s finding that Tesla illegally fired an employee involved in union organizing, and that Mr. Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, had illegally threatened workers’ stock options in a post on Twitter if they chose to unionize. The opinion allowed the labor board to enforce its 2021 order requiring Tesla to reinstate, with back pay, the employee, Richard Ortiz, and Mr. Musk to delete the 2018 post.Mr. Musk challenged the panel’s ruling, and on Friday the full court ruled, 9 to 8, that the labor board had improperly ordered him to delete the social media post. “The agency exceeded its authority,” the 11-page ruling said. “We hold that Musk’s tweets are constitutionally protected speech.”“Deleting the speech of private citizens on topics of public concern is not a remedy traditionally countenanced by American law,” the ruling added.The court sent the matter of Mr. Ortiz’s firing back to the labor board to review, saying the board had failed “to consider the fact that the actual decision maker in Ortiz’s firing harbored no anti-union animus.”The judges did not rule on whether Mr. Musk’s online comment constituted a National Labor Relations Act violation for illegally threatening workers. (The board has held that it did.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Republican Legal Challenges to Voting Rules Hit a Rough Patch

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      The legal wars over election rules are raging even as voters around the country cast ballots. And several recent efforts by groups aligned with former President Donald J. Trump to challenge voting rules have been coming up short in federal and state courts.Judges in a number of political battlegrounds and other states have rejected legal challenges this month to voter rolls and procedures by Republicans and their allies.The Nebraska State Supreme Court ruled that election officials cannot bar people with felony convictions from voting after their sentences are served.A Michigan state judge rejected a Republican attempt to prevent certain citizens living abroad, including military members, from being eligible to cast an absentee ballot in that swing state.And a federal judge in Arizona rejected a last-minute push by a conservative group to run citizenship checks on tens of thousands of voters.“They are hitting quite a losing streak,” said David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, who advises both Democratic and Republican election officials on rules and procedures and has been tracking election-related litigation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Pennsylvania Supreme Court Allows Provisional Votes After Mail Ballot Rejections

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      The decision is likely to affect thousands of mail-in ballots among the millions that will be cast in Pennsylvania, a pivotal 2024 swing state.The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that voters who submit mail-in ballots that are rejected for not following procedural directions can still cast provisional ballots.The decision is likely to affect thousands of mail-in ballots among the millions that will be cast in Pennsylvania, the swing state that holds the most electoral votes and is set to be the most consequential in the presidential election.The court ruled 4 to 3 that the Butler County board of elections must count provisional ballots cast by several voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected for lacking mandatory secrecy envelopes.Secrecy envelopes are commonly used to protect the privacy of a person’s vote. In Pennsylvania, voters must accurately sign and date this outer envelope before sending in their ballots.Under the new ruling, voters whose mail-in ballots are rejected for being “naked ballots,” lacking the secrecy envelope, or for bearing inaccurate or missing information on the envelope will be given the chance to cast a provisional vote at their polling place. The ruling makes the practice available statewide.Provisional ballots are counted only when the voter’s registration is confirmed after voting — and the rejected ballot will not count. Many counties in the state will notify voters if their mail-in ballots are rejected for not following technical procedures and will give them the opportunity for a provisional vote.The court’s majority argued that allowing people a provisional vote helps ensure voter access while preventing double voting.The Republican litigants argued that the Butler County elections board had initially correctly voided the provisional ballots cast by the voters whose mail-in ballots had been rejected on procedural grounds. The ruling is a blow to the Republican National Committee and the state G.O.P., which brought the appeal to the state’s highest court.A spokeswoman for the R.N.C. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The Pennsylvania Democratic Party, which had participated in appealing the case, considered the ruling a victory.“While Republicans try to block your vote, Democrats are protecting it and standing up for the principle that every eligible voter has a right to make their voice heard, no matter how they vote,” Charles Lutvak, a spokesman for Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, and Alex Floyd, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said in a joint statement. “This ruling reaffirms that principle.” More