Republicans ask Pennsylvania court to put on hold decision on mail ballot envelope rules

HARRISBURG, Pa. —  Republicans wasted no time in appealing a Pennsylvania court decision that would relax the rules for mail ballots, asking the state Supreme Court on Thursday to reverse a lower court opinion issued one day earlier.

The state and national GOP filed an emergency request that justices put on hold a Commonwealth Court ruling that envelopes voters use to send in mail ballots don’t need to have been accurately hand-dated, as required under state law.

The Republican groups said that if the high court does not stay the order it should at least modify it to say it’s not in force for the voting that concludes Tuesday.

The Commonwealth Court, in a 3-2 decision, said 69 mail ballots that lacked dates or had inaccurate dates should be counted in two Philadelphia state House of Representatives special elections held in September.

The judges emphasized they were ruling on an election that has already occurred — and involved unopposed candidates — but there’s uncertainty about how it might apply to the general election now underway. Pennsylvania is the largest swing state in the close presidential race, and its voters are also deciding a U.S. Senate election, three statewide offices and most of the Legislature.

The rules for mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania have been frequently litigated in state and federal courts since absentee and mail-in ballots were allowed for all registered voters by the Legislature in 2019, on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic. In March, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the requirement of an accurate, handwritten date was enforceable, and in April the state redesigned the envelopes to make it harder for voters to make dating mistakes. The state Supreme Court last month turned down an effort to throw out the dating requirement, and said on Oct. 5 it would not revisit the issue.

The Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of Pennsylvania argued that the decision came down too close to election day, county boards of elections should have been allowed to weigh in, and the state Supreme Court has recently ruled the other way on the same topic.

“Without this court’s intervention, county boards will thus likely count undated ballots the General Assembly has said must not be counted,” they wrote in the filing made Thursday. They warned that the uniform date requirement may be applied in different ways across the state.

“There is no excuse — none — for the majority rushing to invalidate the General Assembly’s date requirement less than a week before the 2024 General Election,” they wrote in the emergency application for extraordinary relief.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court gave other parties until early Friday to respond.

In two decisions over the last two months, the state Supreme Court left the exterior envelope date mandate in place and indicated the high court did not want existing laws or procedures changed in substantial ways “during the pendency of an ongoing election.”

The Commonwealth Court majority said the requirement for accurate exterior envelope dates, which are not needed to determine if a ballot has arrived in time, runs afoul of the state constitutional provision that elections must be free and equal and no civil or military power can interfere with the “free exercise of the right of suffrage.”

Scolforo writes for the Associated Press.