HARRISBURG, Pa. — A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled that it is unconstitutional for the presidential battleground state of Pennsylvania to throw out mail-in ballots simply because the voter didn’t write an accurate date on the return envelope.
The unanimous decision by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Pennsylvania to stop throwing out such ballots and upheld the decision earlier this year by a federal judge in Pittsburgh.
In its 55-page opinion, the three-judge panel said it had to weigh the state’s interest in throwing out the ballots against the constitutional right to vote.
The panel wrote that it was “unable to justify” the practice of discarding such ballots “that has resulted in the disqualification of thousands of presumably proper ballots.”
Under Pennsylvania law, voters are required to write the date on the return envelope for their mail ballot. However, thousands of voters, confused by the request to write the date, might skip it or write another date, such as their birth date.
Tuesday’s decision marks the latest instance in more than a half-dozen cases where a court has instructed election officials in Pennsylvania to count such ballots.
However, higher courts have always reinstated the requirement in the heavily litigated matter that has pitted Democrats and their allies in trying to get rid of the requirement against Republicans who defend it. For Tuesday’s ruling to be reversed, the U.S. Supreme Court would need to take up the issue.
Republicans did not immediately respond to queries about whether they will appeal.
Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania supported the lawsuit against the provision and, in a statement Tuesday, said it is “disenfranchisement and unconstitutional” to throw out a voter’s ballot over the handwritten date. His administration’s lawyers had argued that “meaningless errors shouldn’t cost you your right to vote in Pennsylvania,” he said.
Democrats typically cast more mail-in ballots than Republicans, perhaps a result of President Donald Trump’s demonization of mail-in voting and baseless allegations that it is rife with fraud. As recently as last week, Trump claimed there is “MASSIVE FRAUD” due to mail voting, when in fact voting fraud in the U.S. is rare.
The decision affects a small percentage of votes typically cast in the state. However, it also results in thousands of mail-in ballots being thrown out in every election and, in the politically divided state, every vote truly counts in presidential races.
Tuesday’s decision was a victory for the groups that sued, including the American Federation of Teachers of Pennsylvania and the campaign arms of Democrats in the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate. They were supported by the Black Political Empowerment Project, Common Cause Pennsylvania, the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania State Conference of the NAACP, among others.
In a statement, AFT Pennsylvania’s president, Wendy Coleman, called the decision a “victory for Pennsylvania voters and our democracy.”
Opposing the lawsuit were national and state Republican parties, as well as the campaign arm of Republicans in the U.S. House.
Republicans contend that the date requirement is a matter of election security and have pushed for the strictest possible interpretation of state law to throw out ballots. Still, election officials have told courts that the requirement to write a date on the return envelope has no practical use and no effect on how they determine whether the ballot is valid or received on time.
In its opinion, the appeals court panel said accepting ballots whose envelope has a missing or incorrect date “will have no effect on fraud detection.”
“Discarding thousands of ballots every election is not a reasonable trade-off in view of the date requirement’s extremely limited and unlikely capacity to detect and deter fraud,” the appeals court panel wrote.
On top of that, it said, the requirement “seems to hamper rather than facilitate election efficiency.”
The state Supreme Court announced earlier this year that it will consider the issue. But that was after the court put off ruling on a pending case before last year’s presidential election and dismissed another on a technicality.
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Follow Marc Levy on X at: https://x.com/timelywriter