The Supreme Court temporarily reinstated a South Carolina rule requiring that witnesses sign an absentee ballot for that ballot to be counted in the November election, USA Today reports.
The rule, which was supported by the republican Party of South Carolina, requires any mail in ballot to have two signatures: the signature of the voter and the signature of the witness.
Any ballot received after Wednesday must have two signatures or it will be invalid. Ballots received prior to Wednesday may only have one signature.
South Carolina has had the signature requirement in past elections, but voting rights advocates had won suspension of the witness signature rule given that obtaining a second signature may risk compromised individuals during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Court did not release the vote in the reinstatement but other similar rulings have been along Party lines, with an exception of a case from Rhode Island in which government officials agreed the signature was not needed. (In the Rhode Island case, even though no government agency objected, the Court’s three most conservative jurists–Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch–still dissented.)