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A federal appeals court on Tuesday voided a Pennsylvania law requiring proper dating of mail-in ballots. The law required the rejection of mail-in ballots improperly dated by voters. The Pennsylvania Attorney General, now a Republican, defended the law on appeal after his predecessor, a Democrat, had declined to defend it in a lower court.
Numerous types of dating errors could result in ballot rejection, the appeals court noted:
Pursuant to this “date requirement,” if a return envelope’s date field contains a mistaken additional digit, a stray pen mark, or missing information (including a year) then the ballot contained within that envelope may not be counted. (citations omitted)
The law led to 10,000 discarded ballots in the 2022 General Election. Only 4,500 ballots were discarded in the 2024 General Election after Pennsylvania redesigned the return envelope to reduce the number of discarded ballots.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that while the dating requirement only minimally burdened voters, the consequences of an improperly dated ballot outweighed any purported benefit of the requirement.
The challenge came after the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania interpreted a part of the state election code requiring voters to “fill out, date and sign” their mail-in ballot. The state supreme court held that the dating requirement mandates discarding ballots that are improperly dated.
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