Pennsylvania counties can help voters fix problems with their mail ballots, state court rules

by Jonathan Lai and Jeremy Roebuck
Updated Sep 29, 2022



A state judge cleared the way Thursday for Pennsylvania counties to continue helping voters correct small mistakes on their submitted mail ballots, saying nothing in the law prohibits the practice. The decision was a loss, at least temporarily, for Republicans who have tried in recent years to stop local elections officials from offering voters the opportunity to fix errors like missing signatures that would otherwise cause their ballots to be thrown out. “Petitioners have not proven that there is a clear violation of the Election Code or the law interpreting the Election Code,” Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court Judge Ellen Ceisler wrote in her 58-page opinion.

The ruling came in response to a lawsuit brought by the Republican National Committee, which had asked the judge to bar the practice — known as “ballot curing” — before the November election. They cited the fact that there is no consistent curing policy across the state, and that some counties allow voters to fix errors while others do not. But barring all 67 counties from doing so, Ceisler wrote, “would clearly cause greater injury than refusing the injunction, precisely because it would seriously harm the public interest and orderly administration of the 2022 General Election, which is already well underway.” The RNC called Ceisler’s decision “flawed” and said it was weighing its options for appeal to the state Supreme Court.

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The question of how to handle clearly flawed ballots has dogged counties since Pennsylvania’s massive expansion of mail voting in 2020. Voters inevitably make mistakes, and when they submit ballots with what are considered “fatal flaws” — the kind that require the ballots be rejected — some counties try to fix it. Fatally flawed ballots include those without the voter’s signature on the outer envelope, which is required under state law, or so-called “naked ballots” — those returned without the inner secrecy envelope. Depending on the error, some counties undertake “notice and cure” procedures to try to alert voters of the problem and help them resolve it so their vote can be counted. For example, a county might call, email, or send a postcard to a voter telling them know to visit their local elections office to sign an unsigned ballot. Some counties leave contacting such voters to political parties. Others don’t do anything at all, rejecting the ballot outright.

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Democrats and state elections officials argued that all counties have the option to implement curing policies, and that banning curing will disenfranchise lawfully registered voters. “It’s about votes, not counting. … The outcomes of elections can be affected if people are disenfranchised,” Cliff Levine, a Democratic lawyer, said in a hearing last week. Though many states have very clearly defined procedures for ballot curing, Pennsylvania doesn’t. It’s not clear how many ballots are cured statewide in any given election, in part because the lack of standard procedures means there isn’t standard data collection. But Republicans argue that any kind of “notice and cure” processes — no matter what they may be — are illegal. State election law doesn’t address the issue, other than to specifically allow voters who were missing identification when voting by mail to provide it after Election Day.

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https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/pennsylvania-mail-ballots-notice-cure-election-commonwealth-court-20220929.html