Madison Kwiecinski – Editor-in-Chief 

Mvk5945@psu.edu

The state and national Republican party are once again suing in Pennsylvania in an attempt to block certain mail-in votes from counting. The GOP is specifically opposing counting ballots in which the voter did not post a handwritten date on the outside of the envelope. 

Pennsylvania constituents are electing a new Governor as well as a new U.S. Senator this year, so the state is facing an important election. 

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned a lower PA court’s decision, allowing for the ballots without handwritten dates on the envelope to be counted. However, the GOP was not a fan of this course of action and is now taking action to oppose it. 

On Sunday, October 17, with less than three total weeks left until election day, the GOP filed an appeal of the decision to the Supreme Court. The court has discretionary appellate jurisdiction, meaning they can choose to hear the case if four justices would like to, but are under no obligation to do so. 

As of October 14, nearly 1.3 million voters had applied for mail-in ballots. Democrats are far more likely to vote through mail-in voting, as the number of democratic voters who have requested mail-in ballots outnumbers that of the GOP by an approximate 4-to-1 ratio. 

Mail-in ballots are supposed to be both postmarked and time-stamped from the county who receives them, therefore, Democrats have argued that the provision that requires them to be dated is useless. It is also a common Democratic argument to state that refusing to count non-dated ballots and throwing out that voter’s ballot would be a violation of their civil rights, denying them the ability to vote. 

Democratic Governor Tom Wolf’s administration has directed counties to include ballots contained inside of envelopes that are not dated or do not have the proper date as long as the ballots are received prior to November 8 by the county. Acting Secretary of State Lehigh M. Chapman has confirmed this is how county election officials will be directed. 

Chapman has stated that the Supreme Court, “provides no justification for counties to exclude ballots based on a minor omission, and we expect that counties will continue to comply with their obligation to count all legal votes.”