Officials Can’t Reject Mail-In Ballots With Incorrect Dates: Pennsylvania Court

A Pennsylvania court has ruled that election officials cannot reject mail-in ballots with incorrect dates or no dates as long as they were submitted before the filing deadline.

A man photographs himself depositing his ballot in an official ballot drop box at Philadelphia City Hall, Pa., on Oct. 27, 2020. Mark Makela/Getty Images

A panel of the Commonwealth State Appeals Court ruled on Aug. 30 that the state’s legal requirement for mail-in ballot envelopes to have dates written violates the state constitution.

“Simply put, the refusal to count undated or incorrectly dated but timely received mail ballots submitted by otherwise eligible voters because of meaningless and inconsequential paperwork errors violates the fundamental right to vote recognized in and guaranteed by the free and equal elections clause of the Pennsylvania Constitution,” wrote Commonwealth Court Judge Ellen Ceisler for the 4-1 majority.

The ruling applies to both Philadelphia and Allegheny counties, and strikes down a 2019 law – Act 77 – which included a provision requiring voters to date the envelope in which the mail-in ballots are enclosed.

As the Epoch Times notes further, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) challenged that and other provisions, arguing that they are unconstitutional as they sued Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, the Philadelphia County Board of Elections, and the Allegheny County Board of Elections.

The Pennsylvania Republican Party and the Republican National Committee intervened in the case and said the provisions do not violate the state Constitution.

The majority declined to rule against other provisions but said the date requirement is unconstitutional.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said in a social media statement that the court “got it right: an eligible voter’s minor error of forgetting to date or misdating a ballot envelope cannot be cause for disenfranchisement.”

The appeals court said in the ruling that officials still have the authority to make sure mail-in ballots comply with other requirements, including deadlines for submission.

Pennsylvania’s Department of State said that “multiple court cases have now confirmed that the dating of a mail-in ballot envelope, when election officials can already confirm it was sent and received within the legal voting window, provides no purpose to election administration.”

The office has not said how the decision might alter its guidance to counties that run elections. In July, the Department of State told counties that return envelopes should be printed to include the full year, “2024,” leaving voters to add the accurate month and day.

Mike Lee, executive director of the Pennsylvania ACLU, said the ruling “preserves the votes of thousands of voters who make this mistake in every election, without undemocratic, punitive enforcement by the counties.”

According to data presented to the court, more than 10,000 mail-in ballots were not counted in the 2022 midterm election and 4,000 were rejected in the primary elections earlier this year because the ballots did not comply with the ballot date requirement.

Tom King, who represents the state and national Republican Party groups in the case, said he was disappointed in the decision and “absolutely will appeal.”

Commonwealth Court Judge Patricia McCullough said in a dissent that the date requirement was “perhaps the least burdensome of all ballot-casting requirements” and that the groups that challenged the provision had not met the burden of showing that the requirement was so difficult as to deny voters their right to vote.

“It seems to me that the majority was swayed by the raw numbers and avoided applying the true test for evaluating a Free and Equal Elections Clause claim,” she wrote.

“Today the majority says that requiring the date on the voter declaration on a mail-in or absentee ballot envelope is subject to strict judicial scrutiny and cannot be enforced because doing so unconstitutionally denies the voting franchise altogether. I must wonder whether walking into a polling place, signing your name, licking an envelope, or going to the mailbox can now withstand the majority’s newly minted standard.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.