Pennsylvania court stops incorrectly dated mail-in votes from being thrown out

A Pennsylvania court ruled to halt the enforcement of a rule requiring mail-in ballots to include accurate, handwritten dates on the envelopes used to submit them.

The ruling will likely save thousands of ballots from being thrown out because of violations.

“The refusal to count undated or incorrectly dated but timely mail ballots submitted by otherwise eligible voters because of meaningless and inconsequential paperwork errors violates the fundamental right to vote” in the Pennsylvania Constitution, Judge Ellen Ceisler wrote in the majority opinion, siding with the left-leaning groups that sued three months ago.

The court ruled 4-1 that tossing out voters' ballots violates the state constitution's clause that addresses "free and equal" elections. Judge Patricia McCullough was the only judge to dissent, saying that the majority showed “a wholesale abandonment of common sense,” ignored more than a century of legal precedent, and rewrote the 2019 state law that expanded mail-in voting.

“I must wonder whether walking into a polling place, signing your name, licking an envelope, or going to the mailbox can now withstand the majority’s newly minted standard,” McCullough wrote.

Several Democratic Party groups joined the lawsuit, and Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) posted on X that the ruling was “a victory for Pennsylvanians’ fundamental right to vote.” The case was first brought against the secretary of state and the election boards in Philadelphia and Allegheny County.

The Department of State already determined that the dating of a mail-in ballot envelope has "no purpose to election administration."

“Multiple court cases have now confirmed that the dating of a mail-in ballot envelope, when election officials can already confirm it was sent and received within the legal voting window, provides no purpose to election administration,” the Department of State said in a release.

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One lawyer who represented the state and the national GOP groups in the case has already said that they will appeal.

The court's decision could benefit Vice President Kamala Harris in the critical battleground state if past history repeats itself. In 2020, 58% of President Joe Biden's voters cast their vote by absentee or mail-in ballots, while 32% of Trump voters did so, according to a Pew Research poll .