The Gateway Pundit previously reported that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that undated mail-in ballots cannot be counted in this year’s midterm election.
Democrats in the state fought to count every ballot real or imaginary. This decision is a blow to their plans for the state.
“PA’s Supreme Court justices vacated the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision that would have allowed the counting of ballots that were not completed as the Keystone State election laws require, and ruled that the “Pennsylvania county boards of elections are hereby ordered to refrain from counting any absentee and mail-in ballots received for the November 8, 2022 general election that are contained in undated or incorrectly dated outer envelopes,” Townhall reported.
On Friday night, state chapters of the NAACP, League of Women Voters, Common Cause, and other groups filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania in response to a ruling by the state Supreme Court that officials cannot count ballots whose return envelopes do not have accurate, handwritten dates. Several groups were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
AP reported:
The groups said refusing to count such ballots “because of a trivial paperwork error” could disenfranchise thousands of voters and would violate provisions of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964, which states that immaterial errors or omissions should not be used to prevent voting.
“Refusing to count votes based on immaterial paperwork errors has a suppressive effect … by erecting yet another roadblock preventing them from voting and having their votes counted,” the lawsuit said.
The groups —- which also included Philadelphians Organized to Witness, Empower and Rebuild, the Black Political Empowerment Project and Make the Road Pennsylvania — also said they would have to divert resources from voter mobilization and education to track down voters who omitted the date on the return envelopes of their ballots.
They are asking the court to bar election officials from rejecting otherwise valid ballots with missing or incorrect dates on the return envelope and to bar state and county governments from certifying any election in which such ballots are not counted.
The state Supreme Court had unanimously barred officials from counting such votes, directing county boards of elections to “segregate and preserve” those ballots, but the justices split 3-3 on whether making the envelope dates mandatory under state law would violate provisions of federal civil rights law.
The high court issued a supplemental order Saturday clarifying that the incorrectly dated ballot envelopes referred to in addition to undated ballots meant mail-in ballot envelopes with dates outside the range of Sept. 19 through Nov. 8 and absentee ballot envelopes dated outside the range of Aug. 30 through Nov. 8.
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