A federal appeals court says undated Pa. mail ballots should be counted, a decision that breaks with state courts and could have immediate impact

by Jonathan Lai
Published 42 minutes ago

Pennsylvania mail ballots that were submitted without a date on the envelope last year should be counted, a federal appeals court said Friday, a ruling that could mean thousands more votes get counted in elections moving forward — starting with this past Tuesday’s primary. The ruling will also almost certainly reignite the smoldering political fight over undated mail ballots; create new questions and pressure for county elections officials as they continue to count votes from this week’s primary; and create another potential opening for county-by-county legal challenges as the Senate Republican primary heads toward a likely recount.

The full extent of the decision’s impact is unclear, because the court issued a judgment and said an opinion would come later. The question before the three-judge panel in Philadelphia was whether to count 257 undated mail ballots in Lehigh County from last November’s general election. State law requires voters to sign and date the outside mailing envelope when they return their mail ballots, and state courts have held that the requirement means undated ballots must be rejected.

But throwing out those votes violates the federal Civil Rights Act, the ACLU argued, because the date isn’t actually used in determining the legitimacy of a vote. The group brought the case, Migliori v. Lehigh County Board of Elections, on behalf of five voters whose undated ballots were to be rejected after a separate case wound through state courts.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit judges agreed with that argument Friday, declaring that the date requirement in state law is immaterial under the Civil Rights Act — meaning it can’t be used as a reason for rejecting the ballots. “Accordingly, there is no basis on this record to refuse to count undated ballots that have been set aside in the November 2, 2021, election for Judge of the Common Pleas of Lehigh County,” the judgment reads. The decision has implications that could extend far beyond one election in one county.

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https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/undated-mail-ballots-pennsylvania-lehigh-county-migliori-20220520.html