HARRISBURG, Pa. — Republicans wasted no time in appealing a Pennsylvania court decision that would relax the rules for mail ballots, asking the state Supreme Court on Thursday to reverse a lower-court opinion issued one day earlier.

The state and national GOP filed an emergency request that that justices put on hold a Commonwealth Court ruling that envelopes voters use to send in mail ballots don’t need to have been accurately hand-dated, as required under state law.

The Republican groups said that if the high court does not stay the order it should at least modify it to say it’s not in force for the voting that concludes on Tuesday.

Commonwealth Court, in a 3-2 decision, said 69 mail ballots that lacked dates or had inaccurate dates should be counted in two Philadelphia state House of Representatives special elections held in September.

The judges emphasized they were ruling on an election that has already occurred — and involved unopposed candidates — but there’s uncertainty about how it might apply to the election underway. Pennsylvania is the largest swing state in the close presidential race, and its voters are also filling a U.S. Senate seat, three statewide row offices and most of the legislature.

The rules for mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania have been frequently litigated in state and federal courts since absentee and mail-in ballots were allowed for all registered voters by the Legislature in 2019, on the eve of the pandemic. In March, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the requirement of an accurate, handwritten date was enforceable, and in April the state redesigned the envelopes to make it harder for voters to make dating mistakes. The state Supreme Court last month turned down an effort to throw out the dating requirement, and said on Oct. 5 it would not revisit the issue.

The Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of Pennsylvania argued the decision came down too close to Election Day, county boards of elections should have been allowed to weigh in, and the state Supreme Court has recently ruled the other way about the same topic.

“Without this court’s intervention, county boards will thus likely count undated ballots the General Assembly has said must not be counted,” they wrote in the filing made Thursday. They warned that the uniform date requirement may be applied in different ways across the state.