The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruled on Friday that ballots without dates will not be counted in the 2024 general election. This ruling is the opposite of a similar case heard by the Supreme Court of Nevada, which ruled that mail-in ballots without postmarks are to be counted up to three days post-election.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling overrode a lower appeals court, which ordered the undated ballots to be counted. Republicans opposed the counting of undated ballots in a September special election and feared the precedent would apply to all counties in the 2024 general election, according to The Epoch Times on Friday.
“The Republican National Committee and Pennsylvania Republican Party submitted a request for emergency relief on Oct. 31, arguing that an appeals court had incorrectly ruled that the Philadelphia Board of Elections must count a set of undated envelopes in a September special election for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives,” The Epoch Times said Friday. “According to the Republicans, the decision not only was incorrect in its reasoning but also contained an order they feared wasn’t specific enough and would be applied to other counties in the November elections.”
The commonwealth’s Supreme Court decision granted the request for a stay on the appeals court ruling. This ruling also ensures that the lower appeals court decision (of allowing the counting of undated ballots) will not be applied to the general election, meaning that undated ballots will not be counted in Pennsylvania.
According to The Epoch Times, the appeals court ruled in favor of counting undated ballots, as it argued that not counting them would violate the commonwealth’s constitution’s ‘free and equal elections clause’.
“Elections shall be free and equal; and no power, civil or military, shall at any time interfere to prevent the free exercise of the right of suffrage,” the Pennsylvania constitution said.
“As the undisputed factual findings underlying the trial court’s order illustrate, thousands of Pennsylvania voters have been disenfranchised by the County Board’s rejection of their mail ballots due to missing or incorrect dates on their ballot envelopes,” the appellate judges wrote, according to The Epoch Times.
Republicans however, reasoned that the appeals court ruling created an issue with ‘equal protection under the law’ because it was implying that just a single county (Philadelphia) had to abide by this interpretation of the state constitution.
“Some county boards might accept the [appeals court] majority’s reassurance that its latest attack on the date requirement applies only to the past Philadelphia special election,” Pennsylvania Republicans said in their request for relief, according to The Epoch Times. “But that would result in different county boards applying different standards for determining the validity of mail ballots, a textbook violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution and the Pennsylvania Constitution.”
While the ruling blocking the counting of undated ballots was a win for Republicans, the GOP took a loss in a separate ruling which allows voters to cast provisional ballots after improperly submitting mail-in ballots.
“Republicans also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt a separate decision by the state supreme court allowing voters to cast provisional ballots after improperly submitting mail-in ballots. The highest court rejected the request on Nov. 1,” The Epoch Times said Friday. “A judge in Pennsylvania also issued a preliminary injunction on Oct. 30 preventing the Bucks County Board of Elections from turning away people who show up to apply for mail-in ballots. Republicans had filed a lawsuit accusing Bucks County of disobeying state law by turning away voters at county elections offices and refusing to process mail-in ballot applications.”