Counties must notify voters if their mail ballot was rejected, Pa. Supreme Court rules

• By Carter Walker/Votebeat

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Voters must be notified if election officials are going to reject their mail ballots because of an error, such as an incorrect date or missing signature on the return envelope, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled Friday.

In a 4-3 decision, the court ruled that Washington County erred in not notifying 2024 presidential primary voters that their mail ballots would be rejected, leaving them unaware their votes would go uncounted.

“We must interpret the Election Code and its statutory procedures in a way that ‘favors the fundamental right to vote and enfranchises, rather than disenfranchises, the electorate,’ Justice Kevin Dougherty said, writing for the majority. “Reading the Code as allowing county boards to withhold readily available information from voters does not serve that goal.”

The decision, in combination with another ruling last year from the high court, means that voters across the state will have at least some rights to be notified and have some recourse if their mail ballots are at risk of being rejected because of mistakes.

Before the 2024 primary, the Republican majority on Washington County’s board of elections opted not to notify voters of mistakes with their mail ballots that would cause their votes to be disqualified, such as a missing date or signature, or being returned without a secrecy envelope. That left voters with no way to know about those errors or fix them to ensure their vote could be counted.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court had previously ruled that state law doesn’t require counties to give voters a chance to fix errors with their ballots, but it also doesn’t prohibit the practice either. As a result, many counties adopted such a process to tell voters of their mistakes and give them another chance, referred to as “notice and cure.”

More than half of counties do this, according to a Votebeat and Spotlight PA analysis.

During the primary, Washington County gave voters no warning if their ballot had an error that would result in it being rejected, even though it acknowledged receiving them. When Washington County received a mail ballot back from a voter, it used only generic codes in the state’s ballot tracking system to indicate the ballot had been received, rather than more specific codes that could indicate whether there is a problem that prevents the ballot from being counted. These codes generate distinct emails to voters, and the more specific codes would have generated emails that informed voters their ballots were at risk of rejection.

Ultimately, Washington County rejected 259 mail ballots during the primary for issues with a signature or date on the outer envelope, or for being returned without an inner secrecy envelope. That was roughly 2.2% of mail ballots returned to the county.