Bucks County judge upholds 2, overturns 1 election board votes involving provisional ballots

A Bucks County Common Pleas judge has rejected two party challenges sought to overturn Bucks County Board of Election decisions involving provisional ballots in the Nov. 5 general election.

But Judge Jordan Yeager on Thursday also ruled in favor of a GOP petition, and ordered the board not to count provisional ballots with a missing voter signature.

The court orders did not specify the vote totals involved, but it appears to impact 285 provisional ballots, a last-resort option for individuals whose voter eligibility is challenged at the polls.

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Yeager’s orders mean that 160 of those contested provisional ballots will be included in the final certified election results due on Nov. 25.

The Republican National Committee and US Senator-elect David McCormick asked the court to reverse the election board’s Nov. 14 decision to count provisional ballots missing a voter signature on an affidavit and ballots missing the signatures of a judge of elections or minority inspector.

Yeager overruled the BOE and ordered ballots missing a voter signature not to be counted in the final certified election totals.

But the judge upheld the BOE decision to count ballots where election officials failed to countersign voter affidavits, citing McCormick and the RNC as failing to identify any language in the Election Code that justified rejecting them.

“We decline Mr. McCormick’s invitation to read something so significant into the Election Code that simply is not that,” Yeager wrote in his order. “We also worry that such a ruling would effectively empower precinct level election officials to single-handedly disenfranchise voters.”

Yeager also rejected a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee challenge to reverse a BOE decision that tossed out 76 provisional ballots missing a secrecy envelope, citing the law “clearly and unambiguously” instructs that a provisional vote shall not be counted if the ballot envelope does not contain a secrecy envelope.”

The court decisions had virtually no impact on the Bucks County vote totals in the U.S. Senate race between McCormick and Casey.  Casey received roughly 1,200 more votes than McCormick in Bucks County on Nov. 5.

On Thursday Casey, the state’s longest-serving senator, conceded to McCormick, ending one of the closest and most expensive Senate races in 2024.

McCormick defeated Casey by a little more than 16,300 votes. The vote margins triggered a rare mandatory statewide recount, but it was unclear Friday if the recount would take place.

Reporter Jo Ciavaglia can be reached at jciavaglia@gannett.com

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: What provisional ballot challenges did a Bucks County judge reject, uphold

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