In an opinion this week, the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said that, although Pennsylvania law requires voters to sign and date the outer envelope of a mail-in ballot, and the law instructs counties to “set aside” ballots with missing or incorrect dates, counties should count those ballots anyway.
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Somehow, thousands of voters either miss the date completely or write a date later than the voting deadline. For example, election day is Nov. 4 but the voter writes that they voted Nov. 6. Ballots received by 8 p.m. on election day are counted.
Failure to conform with the date requirement caused over 10,000 ballots to be discarded in the 2022 general election, according to the opinion.
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The court said it cannot justify Pennsylvania’s practice of discarding “thousands of presumably proper ballots,” just because the envelope is wrong.
The decision affirms the lower court’s decision by Judge Susan Paradise Baxter from the U.S. Court from the Western District of Pennsylvania.
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Immediately after universal mail-in ballots were adopted in Pennsylvania, Democrats pushed heavily for voters to vote by mail. While Democrats went door-to-door, encouraging people to vote by mail, Republicans were skeptical about the security of mail-in ballots. Democrats overwhelmed Republicans with mail-in votes in 2022, earning victories in numerous races, including the governor’s race and flipping a longtime Republican (Pat Toomey) Senate seat to Democrat (John Fetterman). In 2024, more Republicans tried mail-in voting, but it is still a method favored by Democrats.
President Trump intends to ban mail-in voting with an executive order. A move that will surely be met with leftist lawfare.
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“Unlike in-person voting, where safeguards such as voter ID verification are standard and supported by a majority of the people, mail-in ballots are susceptible to fraud, misdelivery, and errors,” Findlay wrote for The Federalist. “Ballots can be intercepted and fraudulently cast, lost in transit, or even altered without the voter’s knowledge. In addition, signature verification — a key safeguard — is far from foolproof.”
* Original Article:
https://thefederalist.com/2025/08/27/court-says-pennsylvania-must-count-mail-ballots-with-improperly-dated-envelopes/
