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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.
A federal judge has issued a ruling in a case involving undated mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania that is likely to have major implications in upcoming elections.
U.S. District Judge Susan Paradise Baxter, a registered Democrat who was, surprisingly, appointed in 2018 by then-President Donald Trump, ruled that Pennsylvania’s law mandating ballots be dated or else they cannot be counted violates U.S. law, Politics PA reports.
“The Court has concluded that the Commonwealth’s mandatory application of its Date Requirement violates the Materiality Provision of the Civil Rights Act,” Baxter wrote in her ruling.
“Since the Court is confident that the Plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment should be granted on that basis, there is no need to reach their constitutional claim (and) the Plaintiffs’ equal protection claim will be dismissed,” she added.
Resist the Mainstream adds:
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In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court voided a lower court’s ruling in a similar case, relating to ballots for a Pennsylvania county judge’s race, following the concession of the Republican candidate.
Additionally, three Supreme Court justices, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, have indicated that they’re not convinced that disqualifying ballots for missing handwritten dates violates the Civil Rights Act.
The plaintiffs in Baxter’s case include the Pennsylvania State Conference of the NAACP and the Democratic Party’s campaign committees for U.S. House and Senate candidates. Their argument is based on the contention that not counting undated ballots would violate the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits the denial of the right to vote “because of an error or omission” in any “application, registration, or other act requisite to voting if such error or omission is not material in determining” qualification to vote.
It’s worth noting that Democratic voters are the primary users of mail-in voting, a practice that has been met with significant skepticism from Republicans. The concerns surrounding mail-in voting intensified during the 2020 election, becoming a focal point of claims of voter fraud.
In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of counting undated mail-in ballots in a contested Pennsylvania local election. The 6-3 ruling created broader implications for close races in the November midterm elections.
“Over the objection of three justices, the Court restored a federal appeals court ruling that said disqualifying ballots received on time but lacking a handwritten date on the return envelope would violate federal voting rights,” ABC News reported. Even though election officials typically postmark and date mail ballots once they receive them, Pennsylvania state law mandates that voters include a date next to their signature. The appeals court concluded the absence of the handwritten date was an immaterial error.”
“The Supreme Court did not elaborate on its decision to allow counting to proceed, and it is not binding precedent. But it does suggest that a majority of justices support the view that discarding ballots over small administrative errors or omissions would harm the franchise,” the report added.
Alito wrote that he believes the Third Circuit opinion is “very likely wrong.”
“When a mail-in ballot is not counted because it was not filled out correctly, the voter is not denied ‘the right to vote.’ Rather, that individual’s vote is not counted because he or she did not follow the rules for casting a ballot,” Alito wrote.
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Mail-in ballot cases have made their way to various courts in other states as well.
In October 2022, less than a month before the midterms, a Wisconsin judge rejected an attempt backed by Democrats to allow absentee ballots containing an incomplete witness address to be counted, saying that would disrupt the status quo and cause confusion with voting underway in less than two weeks at the time.
The ruling was a win for the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature, which intervened in the lawsuit. The case focused on how much of the address of a witness needs to be included on an absentee ballot certificate in order for the ballot to be counted.
