PA Supreme Court vacates ruling requiring undated, improperly dated ballots to be counted

Mail ballots lacking a date or that are improperly dated cannot be counted, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in a 4-3 decision announced Friday.

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The high court's decision reverses a 4-1 ruling Aug. 30 by the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, which said that the current law, Act 77 of 2019, violates the fundamental right to vote under the Pennsylvania Constitution "of otherwise eligible voters because of meaningless and inconsequential paperwork errors."

The case was brought in May by the Black Political Empowerment Project, the ACLU and several civil rights organizations against Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt and the elections boards of Allegheny and Philadelphia counties.

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The Supreme Court nixed the appellate court ruling because the plaintiffs failed to name all 67 county boards of elections.

Three justices dissented.

"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," wrote Justice David N. Wecht, who was joined by Chief Justice Debra Todd and Justice Christine Donohue in his dissent.

Some 10,000 mail ballots were disqualified because of dating errors in the 2022 midterm elections. Pennsylvania elections officials and the Democratic National Committee supported the lawsuit.

The Pennsylvania Department of State, in a response on X, formerly Twitter, wrote "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. The Department hopes that this question is answered as soon as possible, for the sake of the voters and our county election administrators preparing for the upcoming presidential election."

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: PA Supreme Court vacates ruling on misdated mail ballots