https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-supreme-courts-pennsylvania-cleanup-11605050501?cx_testId=3&cx_testVariant=cx_4&cx_artPos=1#cxrecs_s
For a few days last week, it looked as if the 2020 election might play out as a gloomy opera of recounts and lawsuits, possibly upstaging Florida in 2000. We can thank the fates for sparing us, since nobody else can claim credit. The task ahead, starting in the Supreme Court, is to prevent a similar shadow from falling next time.
Joe Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania has plodded upward to about 49,000 votes, at last check. That’s a modest margin of 0.73 percentage point, but it’s enough to avoid a recount cataclysm. The potential, though, was there. Pennsylvania law says absentee votes must be returned by 8 p.m. on Election Day. Two months ago, the state’s highest court nonetheless yelled abracadabra and changed the deadline to Nov. 6, while making postmarks optional.
Those straggling ballots remain subject to litigation, and Justice Samuel Alito has ordered local officials to keep them separate. The precise number of late votes hasn’t been released, but a state official said Tuesday that it’s “approximately 10,000.” If Mr. Biden were winning by 537 votes, which was George W. Bush’s final margin in Florida, all hell would break loose. The Court’s decision to invalidate the ballots, or to count them, might well pick the next President.
Now the temptation for the Justices, since Mr. Biden appears to have won Pennsylvania and the White House, will be to call this case moot and walk away from the controversy. That would be a missed opportunity.
