Pennsylvania’s mail ballots continue to be litigated leading up to Election Day

HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) – Pennsylvania’s mail ballots continue to be at the center of legal proceedings, and with less than six weeks until Election Day, there’s still a fight over whether a minor technical mistake should be disqualifying.

Thousands of mail ballots, officials testified at a State Senate hearing on Wednesday, have been tossed because the outer envelope doesn’t have either a date, signature, or secrecy envelope.

“We all make mistakes. We forget our keys. We misplace our phones,” said Philip Hensley-Robin, the Executive Director for Common Cause PA. “They should not be grounds for disenfranchising tens of thousands of our fellow Pennsylvanians.”

Chris Spackman, Dauphin County’s Director of Elections, says about 300 mail ballots were tossed out in the county’s primary election. The county recently approved a notice and “cure” policy for voters if they fail to properly fill out their information.

“We will be able to review those and send them back to the voter and with instructions, with a letter saying, ‘Hey, you made a mistake. Please take your ballot out, put it in a new privacy envelope that we give you…then send it all back to us,'” explained Spackman.

While Dauphin County voters get to fix their mistakes, voters in other counties may not get the same chance. The same is said with drop box availability where some counties have many and some have none at all.

“It’s the product of the counties administering the election,” said State Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R). “Those are local elected officials who have been elected by their county residents.”

Many election officials argue the outer envelope’s date serves no purpose and should not be a reason to disenfranchise voters. Pittman disagrees with that theory.

“The law says, shall. Shall means shall. The law says that you shall date your ballot. And that’s the law.”

The law also says counties may offer a chance for corrections, which is what Dauphin County shall do this year.

“This is a legal approach to being able to remedy ballots that have simple mistakes, that clearly are not illegal ballots,” said Dauphin County Commissioner George Hartwick. “They’re not coming from illegal voters.”

Mail ballots, however, are overwhelmingly coming from registered Democrats. In 2022, John Fetterman received 80% of the mail votes for his U.S. Senate campaign and Josh Shapiro got 84% of the mail votes for Governor. That may explain why Democrats such as Hartwick want more of them to count while Republicans like Pittman want less.

“Quite frankly, regardless of who wins or loses, my intent would remain the same,” says Hartwick. “Whether it was majority Republican, majority independent, majority birthday party. The bottom line is our democracy is clear…we should be thinking about the voter intent.”

Legislative intent is at the core of the controversy and the calls for election uniformity in Pennsylvania continue.

“You definitely want to arrive at a place where voter’s votes are being counted in the same way, regardless of what county they live in,” says Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State Al Schmidt.

Officials say if you’re filling out a mail-in ballot, the sooner you get it into the county, the better. That gives them more time to notify you if you made a mistake. Voters have until 8 p.m. on Election Day to return their mail ballot.

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