Three Pennsylvania counties ordered to count mail-in votes

A Pennsylvania choose has ordered three Republican-controlled counties so as to add about 800 contested mail-in ballots to the outcomes of the Might election, ruling in a authorized dispute that stalled statewide certification of the first outcomes for governor and U.S. Senate.

The Republican choose sided Friday with the Democratic governor in a lawsuit over whether or not mail-in ballots that lack handwritten dates on their return envelopes needs to be counted. The swimsuit is the most recent in a sequence of authorized battles over the state’s 2019 election legislation, which vastly expanded mail-in voting.

The legislation requires voters up to now the envelopes. However Commonwealth Court docket President Choose Renee Cohn Jubelirer agreed with Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration that the shortage of a date was a minor irregularity and mustn’t end in these voters’ disenfranchisement.

The 2019 legislation eradicated straight-party voting — a provision favored by GOP lawmakers — but in addition gave Democrats a broad growth of mail-in voting. Because the pandemic, Pennsylvania Democrats have voted by mail in far higher numbers than Republicans.

Berks, Fayette and Lancaster counties had been ordered to rely the undated mail-in ballots, and the choose gave the counties a Wednesday deadline to certify their main election outcomes — together with the undated ballots — and report again to state election officers.

The ruling got here greater than a month after the Wolf administration filed swimsuit towards the counties’ election boards to drive them to rely the undated ballots and certify their outcomes.

Berks County is reviewing the choice and has not decided on an attraction, mentioned spokesperson Stephanie Weaver. The Lancaster County board of commissioners declined remark. An e mail was despatched to Fayette County officers searching for remark.

In Friday’s ruling, Cohn Jubelirer famous the state Legislature didn’t expressly state that ballots missing a handwritten date on the outside envelope needs to be rejected. However different sections of the election legislation do require sure faulty ballots to be invalidated, reminiscent of those who reveal a voter’s figuring out data, she wrote.

“The courting provisions at concern don’t expressly present that such ballots shouldn’t be counted, in contrast to different provisions of the Election Code,” the choose wrote. “When sure provisions of the Election Code don’t expressly present for a consequence of noncompliance, the courts have discovered that, with out one thing extra, reminiscent of worry of fraud, the poll shouldn’t be invalidated.”

The 2019 election legislation requires voters to put in writing a date subsequent to their signature on the surface of mail-in return envelopes. However the handwritten dates don’t decide whether or not voters are eligible or in the event that they forged their ballots on time.

Cohn Jubelirer’s resolution mentioned the requirement that voters date the return envelopes of their ballots had no apparent goal.

After submitting swimsuit towards the three counties, state officers realized {that a} fourth county, Butler, failed to incorporate undated mail-in ballots within the election outcomes it licensed to the state.

The Wolf administration selected to not add Butler County to its lawsuit as a result of the state’s high elections official had already licensed the county’s outcomes and “balanced the necessity to have correct outcomes with the necessity to have finality in these already-certified elections,” the choose wrote.