The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled Friday that mail-in ballots without the correct dates on envelopes cannot be counted in elections, a decision which could prove crucial in this year’s presidential election where 19 electoral college votes are up for grabs.
The state’s high court ruled on procedural grounds, saying a lower court that found the mandate unenforceable should not have taken up the case because it did not draw in the election boards in all 67 counties.
Left-leaning groups that filed the case only sued two of them, Philadelphia and Allegheny counties.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court said the lower Commonwealth Court “lacked subject matter jurisdiction to review the matter,” according to a court filing.
Commonwealth Court two weeks ago halted enforcement of the handwritten dates on exterior envelopes.
Friday’s ruling now means mail-in ballots must be properly dated in order to be counted enforceable.
The ruling was welcomed by Republicans as a victory for voter integrity in the hotly contested state, while voting rights advocates including the American Civil Liberties Union said they will look at pursuing additional legal options.
President Joe Biden won the state by more than 80,000 votes in 2020, and former President Trump and Vice-President Harris have been campaigning in the Keystone State this week.
Over 800,000 people requested mail ballots for April’s primary election where officials disqualified nearly 16,000 mail-in ballots for irregularities.
Almost half were disqualified because of issues such as missing signatures and wrong dates on outer envelopes, according to the New York Times.
About 75% of the mail-in ballots requested were made by Democrats. --->READ MORE HERE
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The Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out a lower court ruling that required such ballots to be counted during November’s presidential election
Thousands of undated and wrongly dated mail ballots expected to be cast in November’s election could be thrown out after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Friday overturned a lower court ruling ordering these votes be counted.
In a 4-3 ruling, the state high court justices threw out that earlier decision last month in which the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court ballots could not be rejected under a provision of state law that requires Pennsylvania voters to hand write the date on the outer envelope of their ballots for it to count.
But the justices did not engage with the lower court’s reasoning — that the law unfairly disenfranchised otherwise eligible voters — and instead vacated its ruling on procedural grounds, citing defects in how the case was originally filed.
The reversal, which comes less than two months before Election Day and just days before mail ballots could start going out in the critical swing state, delivered the latest turn in a long-running legal back-and-forth that has left the fate of ballots missing dates or dated incorrectly in question election after election.
But Friday’s court ruling may not be the last word. Separate legal challenges to the state’s dating requirement remain pending before a federal judge in Western Pennsylvania and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice David Wecht, in a dissent from his colleagues’ ruling Friday, questioned their decision to overturn the Commonwealth Court without a full briefing, and said it was high time the matter was settled for good.
”A prompt and definitive ruling on the constitutional question presented in this appeal is of paramount public importance inasmuch as it will affect the counting of ballots in the upcoming general election,” Wecht, a Democrat, wrote in a statement that was joined by Chief Justice Debra Todd and Justice Christine Donohue, both Democrats.
The court‘s four other justices — two Democrats and two Republicans — made up the majority.
In a statement Friday, the Pennsylvania Department of State echoed Wecht’s sentiment, and said it hoped the issue would be resolved as soon as possible.
“Today’s decision is disappointing and leaves unanswered the important question of whether the dating requirement violates the Pennsylvania Constitution, as the Commonwealth Court found,” Geoff Morrow, a spokesman for the department, said. --->READ MORE HEREIf you like what you see, please "Like" and/or Follow us on FACEBOOK here, GETTR here, and TWITTER here.
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