The state court found that throwing out otherwise eligible ballots because they were undated or had the wrong date on the outer envelope would violate the State Constitution.
Pennsylvania’s two most populous counties cannot throw out otherwise timely and eligible mail-in ballots because they are undated or do not have the correct date on the outer envelope, a state court ruled on Friday.
The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, siding with voter advocacy groups, found that tossing ballots because they did not comport with a 2019 law requiring voters to date and sign the outer envelope would violate a State Constitution clause guaranteeing “free and equal elections” and pose a “substantial threat of disenfranchisement.”
The ruling could play a critical role in November in the battleground state, which polls now show to be a tossup between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump. Election officials disqualified nearly 16,000 mail-in ballots for irregularities during April’s primary election. Almost half were disqualified because of issues like missing signatures and wrong dates on outer envelopes.
The ruling applies only to Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties. Whether it will extend across the state will most likely depend on county officials and guidance from the office of the secretary of the commonwealth, who leads Pennsylvania’s Department of State.
“This ruling makes clear a voter’s minor error of forgetting to date or misdating a ballot envelope cannot be a cause for disenfranchisement,” the department said in a statement.
Gov. Josh Shapiro hailed the court’s decision in a statement posted on social media, calling it “a victory for Pennsylvanians’ fundamental right to vote.”
The state Republican Party, which had intervened in the suit in support of the state law, known as Act 77, is likely to appeal the ruling to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The party’s state chairman referred a request for comment to its office in Harrisburg, which did not immediately respond.
In 2022, the same Commonwealth Court ordered the counting of undated mail-in ballots after David McCormick, a Republican primary candidate for the U.S. Senate, filed a lawsuit during his close race against Mehmet Oz, the TV personality also known as Dr. Oz.
Voting by mail in Pennsylvania rose roughly tenfold between the 2016 and 2020 presidential election cycles to 2.7 million ballots, which amounted to about 39 percent of all ballots cast across the state. The rise followed the passage of Act 77 in 2019, which allowed all Pennsylvanians to cast their votes by mail.
The law also prohibited county officials from processing or counting mail-in ballots until the morning of Election Day. That slowed vote counting and results, which contributed to some protests in downtown Philadelphia in 2020.
Officials across the country have been scrambling to figure out how to count ballots with only months before the election. In Georgia, local officials are trying to make sense of new rules about certification from the state election board.
Nebraska is in the middle of a court battle over whether the votes of people convicted of felonies should be counted. Like in Pennsylvania, the Nebraska dispute hinges on whether a new state law comports with the State Constitution.
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
