Pa. court strikes down date requirement for mail voting, appeal expected

• Jordan Wilkie/WITF
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Chester County, Pa. election workers process mail-in and absentee ballots at West Chester University, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020, in West Chester.

People who vote by mail will have an easier time getting their ballots accepted due to a state court ruling, though an appeal is expected.

Enforcing the date requirement on the ballot envelope violates the state constitution, Commonwealth Court judges ruled Friday. 

The free and equal clause prevents the government from burdening voters without proper justification, the judges wrote

“The refusal to count undated or incorrectly dated but timely mail ballots submitted by otherwise eligible voters because of meaningless and inconsequential paperwork errors violates the fundamental right to vote” in the Pennsylvania Constitution, wrote Judge Ellen Ceisler in the majority opinion, siding with the left-leaning groups that sued three months ago.

Elections officials only use the date requirement to reject ballots, according to evidence in the case. The court is allowing counties to keep the date section of the mail ballot return envelope, but mistakes there cannot prevent ballot acceptance, pending appeal. 

Pennsylvania is widely seen as a critical battlefield state in the race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, and the 2016 and 2020 presidential contests in the state were both very close.

The number of mail-in ballots that might otherwise be disqualified for lacking accurate exterior envelope dates is comparatively small in a state where more than 6 million votes will be cast this fall, perhaps exceeding 10,000. That’s how many were rejected in the 2022 midterm for this reason. 

The Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of Pennsylvania argued to keep the date requirement. They argued the date can help detect fraud and is a useful backup should the state’s ballot tracking system malfunction. 

“Today’s decision striking down the dated ballot requirement was an example of the worst kind of judicial activism,” wrote the RNC’s Election Integrity Communications Director Claire Zunk.

She said the RNC will appeal. Due to a new rule in state courts regarding elections cases, the appeal is fast-tracked. Briefings from appellants and respondents are due by Wednesday. 

Since there was no statewide rule on what to do once a voter’s mail ballot was rejected, each county made its own decisions. Some counties did not allow those voters to vote provisionally, meaning their mistake prevented them from voting at all. 

“In order to do anything that interferes with that fundamental right, the government must have a good reason. Indeed, the best reason,” said Steve Loney, senior attorney at the ACLU of Pennsylvania, which represented plaintiffs. 

The plaintiffs include the Black Political Empowerment Project, POWER Interfaith, Make the Road Pennsylvania, OnePA Activists United, New PA Project Education Fund, Casa San José, Pittsburgh United, League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania and Common Cause Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania Democratic Party and the Democratic National Committee also intervened in the case to support the plaintiffs. 

Al Schmidt, as Secretary of the Commonwealth, Allegheny County and Philadelphia County were named as defendants. 

The case is one of at least six in state and federal court over different aspects of Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting laws. 

The county-by-county discrepancies in policies generated more lawsuits. In recent weeks, local courts decided two similar lawsuits in Butler and Washington counties, where the judges came to opposing conclusions. 

Now, with an order from a statewide court, and likely a decision soon from the state’s highest court, there will be a standard across all 67 counties for the first time since the universal mail voting law was passed in 2019.  

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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