Judge rules Washington County mail-in ballot policy violated voting rights

The Washington County Board of Elections must notify voters when their mail-in ballots have errors and give them the chance to vote provisionally, a judge has ruled.

A group of seven voters sued the county in July, alleging that a board policy passed a few months earlier that prohibited elections workers from contacting voters who made a mistake on their ballot violated their constitutional right to vote.

Washington County Common Pleas Judge Brandon P. Neuman agreed, issuing a 28-page opinion on Friday.

“A governmentally appointed board does not have unfettered decision-making power to decide if a ballot will be cast and counted,” Neuman wrote. “The policy adopted by the Washington County Board of Elections clearly violated the statutory right to allow a person checks and balances against the government.”

His decision requires the board to notify any elector whose mail-in packet is set aside because of a mistake so that the person can challenge the alleged defect and cast a provisional ballot at the polls.

Neither the county board of elections nor its solicitor returned messages seeking comment.

“This ruling marks a significant step in safeguarding the voting rights of Washington County residents,” said Sarah Martik, executive director of the Center for Coalfield Justice, one of the plaintiffs in the case.

She called having voters receive notification “a no-brainer.”

“This decision helps to ensure that every voter understands their rights and has the opportunity to correct any errors,” Martik said.

The lawsuit alleged that 259 voters in Washington County were denied their right to vote in this year’s primary after the elections board voted 2-1 to change its previous policy.

In the past, voters were alerted to errors on their mail-in ballots and given the chance to fix them.

However, following an April 11 meeting, the county elections board voted to change how defective ballots were entered into Pennsylvania’s Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors system.

Instead of recording an error in the database — triggering an email notification to the voter to either request a new ballot or cast a provisional vote on election day — Washington County’s workers were told to enter the defective ballots as “received,” instead of canceled or pending.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Public Interest Law Center wrote a letter to the board urging it to reverse course, noting that nearly all neighboring counties have a curing process.

In his opinion, Neuman said that the voters were deprived of their right to cast a provisional ballot in the primary.

Under Pennsylvania election law, the judge said, voters have a “clear and unequivocal right” to challenge the board decision.