WASHINGTON D.C. — A Pennsylvania judge today rejected a request from Centre County GOP Chair Michelle Schellberg and local voters to disqualify nearly 100 mail-in ballots cast in the state’s April 23 primary election with misdated or undated outer envelopes. 

The ruling comes as part of a lawsuit filed earlier this month in which Schellberg and individual voters alleged that the Centre County Board of Elections wrongly decided to include 95 ballots in the county’s vote tally with dates that were imprecise or missing altogether. The lawsuit additionally sought to prevent the board from counting undated or misdated mail-in ballots in all future elections.

In today’s order, Judge Julia R. Rater dismissed the county GOP’s legal action on the grounds that Schellberg and the voters filed their petition too late after the board’s April 25 decision to count the 95 undated or misdated ballots. Without reaching the merits of the case, Rater concluded that under state law, the petitioners would have needed to file their appeal of the board’s decision by April 27 or May 2 at the very latest. 

“The Appeal was not filed until May 7, 2024. As such, it is untimely,” Rater’s order reads. 

 Although the 95 contested ballots did not stand to materially affect Centre County’s primary election outcomes, they nonetheless resulted in the county postponing certification of its results as the litigation played out. Following today’s ruling, Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt (D) is expected to certify the statewide primary election results — a process that was held up due to Centre County’s certification delay.  

According to the now-dismissed GOP lawsuit, a 2022 decision from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and 2023 decision from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals preclude Pennsylvania counties from counting mail-in ballots with outer return envelopes that are undated or incorrectly dated. 

On the other hand, the Centre County Board of Elections argued that the “Pennsylvania Supreme Court left untouched the county boards of elections’ authority to determine whether a ballot’s outer envelope is correctly dated.” 

The board also maintained that Schellberg and her co-petitioners brought their legal action too late after its members decided to count the ballots, thereby foreclosing the challenge under state law. In addition to agreeing with this argument in today’s order, Rater maintained that “even if Petitioners’ Appeal could be construed as a petition for an election contest”— as opposed to an appeal of the board’s decision — “it would be fatally deficient leaving the Court without jurisdiction to decide the matter.”

Rater further acknowledged the urgency of finalizing the state’s certification of its primary election results, reasoning that she must dismiss the appeal so as to “avoid any confusion or potential further delays.” In an amicus brief in support of the Centre County Board of Elections, Schmidt and the Pennsylvania Department of State previously urged the court to dismiss the petition in order to allow the secretary to “perform his duty and finally certify the 2024 primary.” 

Centre County was not the only Pennsylvania County beset by legal challenges over mail-in ballots in the wake of the state’s April 23 primary. Litigation is ongoing in a case out of Butler County, where the board of elections refused to allow voters to cure mail-in ballots that were missing inner secrecy envelopes. 

Read the order here.

Learn more about the case here.

More than 100 soldiers and airmen with the Pennsylvania National Guard competed in the annual Governor’s Twenty marksmanship competition at Fort Indiantown Gap on May 9-11.

The competition, which is organized and run by the Pennsylvania National Guard’s Marksmanship Training Unit and this year featured the efforts of 107 service members, determines the top 20 marksmen in the state. The 20 top scorers earn the right to wear the coveted Governor’s Twenty tab on their uniform.

First-place finisher Major Ian Swisher pointed out that several first-time competitors made the top 20.

“Winning feels great, a validation of sorts, to the time and energy I’ve devoted to improving my marksmanship,” Swisher, an operations officer with the 56th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, said in a release. “However, the real winners are the dozens of new shooters we welcomed to the firing line. Everyone, regardless of rank or experience, learns something about themselves or marksmanship every time they compete. That’s how we should be measuring value in competition; it’s the knowledge and experience we take back to our formations that counts.”

The Governor’s Twenty tab, worn on the left shoulder, is a state-level National Guard award that is presented every year and is reflected on a service members’ official personnel record. It is recognized by both the Army and Air Force.

Another top three finisher, Capt. Phillip Wright, competed in 2020 with low expectations, but ended up earning the tab.

“I went in more open minded to learn. I was ecstatic to earn the tab,” said Wright. “This year, I went in with the expectation to finish within the top three because I have been shooting competitively since 2020.”

In order to be competitive, guardsmen need to be proficient with rifles and pistols. Each competitor fires an M17 pistol and M4 carbine. The contest also included an M17 pistol 30 yard slow fire match and a M4 carbine 400 yard slow fire match.

The competition gives an opportunity to guardsmen to apply marksmanship fundamentals. That was one of the motivators for Sgt. 1st Class Douglas Costello, who also finished in the top three, but he also described his participation in the competition as “an honor.”

“I would love to see this match continue to grow,” Costello said. “I get to see friends that I don’t often get to see, I have an opportunity to pass knowledge on to new shooters and I always learn something new myself.”

Here are the Top 20 results, in order from 1st to 20th:

• Maj. Ian Swisher
• Capt. Philip Wright
• Sgt. 1st Class Douglas Costello
• Chief Master Sgt. Edward Altmeyer
• Sgt. Dylan Albert
• Staff Sgt. Luke Heim
• Master Sgt. Shawn McCreary
• Staff Sgt. Robert Robbins
• Staff Sgt. John Rebuck
• Staff Sgt. Zachary Paff
• Sgt. Brennan Koji
• Sgt. Croft Howley
• Sgt. Jack Banducci
• Sgt. James Reddington
• 2nd Lt. Edward Hay
• Sgt. 1st Class Thomas Brick
• Sgt. 1st Class Sean Whaley
• Sgt. Terry Bennett
• Sgt. Craig Buick
• Staff Sgt. Jonathan DeLise

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A man has been charged with murder Thursday after a shooting left 2 dead and 3 others injured in what prosecutors described as a “cold-blooded” attack at a linen company near Philadelphia.

Wilbert Rosado-Ruiz, 61, has been charged with two counts of homicide, multiple counts of aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, and a firearms charge, according to Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer. He was scheduled to be arraigned Thursday afternoon, Stollsteimer said.

Rosado-Ruiz was charged in connection to a shooting that occurred Wednesday morning at Delaware County Linen in Chester, a city south of Philadelphia. The family-owned company was founded in 1988 and provides linen rental and laundering services to businesses in southeastern Pennsylvania and surrounding states, its website said.

Stollsteimer said the shooting appeared to stem from a dispute between Rosado-Ruiz and a female colleague. It was unclear what led to the dispute between the suspect and his co-worker, authorities said.

Two brothers, identified as Leovanny Pena Pena and Giguenson Pena Pena, were killed and three others — including the colleague involved in the dispute — were wounded, authorities said. As of Thursday afternoon, two of the surviving victims were listed in stable condition while one was in critical condition but stable.

“This is a horrible, horrible event (that) should never happen,” Stollsteimer said at a news conference Thursday. “As I said yesterday, (shootings happen) too often in America. It could have happened in any community but it happened, unfortunately, here in the city of Chester.”

Ohio shooting: 3 killed, 3 others wounded following ‘chaotic’ shooting in Ohio; suspect at large

Gunman ‘methodically’ walked around, shooting victims

The shooting happened at about 8:30 a.m. and Chester Police Commissioner Steven Gretsky said officers arrived at a “very chaotic scene.” They found one man dead outside the business entrance and another dead inside.

According to Stollsteimer, surveillance video showed Rosado-Ruiz arriving at the business and having a verbal altercation with a female employee. He then went outside to make a phone call, returned with a gun, and opened fire.

“He methodically walked around the floor of the business,” Stollsteimer said.

The female colleague was the first victim in the incident and left the building after she was shot, according to Stollsteimer. As Rosado-Ruiz was leaving the building, he noticed the woman and fired several more shots but either misfired or ran out of ammunition, Stollsteimer added.

Rosado-Ruiz then fled from the scene but was soon taken into custody after an officer from nearby Trainer, Pennsylvania, heard the vehicle description and stopped the car, Gretsky said.

Stollsteimer added that although Rosado-Ruiz legally owned the gun that was used in the shooting, he faced a weapons charge because he did not have a license to carry a concealed weapon.

Latest workplace shooting in U.S.

There have been at least 168 mass shootings in the country so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks gun violence incidents. The organization defines mass shootings as shootings in which at least four people have been shot, not including the shooter, regardless of whether they die.

Mass killings, as defined by a tracker from USA TODAY, Northeastern University, and the Associated Press, include incidents in which four or more people, excluding the offender, are killed within a 24-hour time frame. There have been 15 such killings in 2024, according to the tracker.

The Chester, Pennsylvania, shooting is also the latest incident of workplace violence carried out by disgruntled workers or former employees. Assault is the fifth-leading cause of workplace deaths, according to the National Safety Council.

Between 2021 and 2022, the public service organization counted over 57,600 injuries. In 2022, there were 525 fatalities reported due to assault.

Last year, seven people were killed in two related shootings in Half Moon Bay, California, in what authorities described as an “instance of workplace violence.” In June 2022, three people were killed and three others injured — including the gunman — at a Maryland manufacturing facility.

About five months later, a gunman, who a witness said was targeting co-workers, killed six people at a Walmart in Virginia. In 2021, a former employee at a FedEx facility in Indiana killed eight people.

Though multiple workplace killings by employees have occurred in recent years, experts have said these incidents are comparatively rare when looking at all U.S. mass killings, USA TODAY reported in 2022.

“In terms of workplace homicides, most are actually committed not by employees,” James Alan Fox, a criminologist and professor at Northeastern University, previously told USA TODAY.

Contributing: Jeanine Santucci and Nada Hassanein, USA TODAY