Pennsylvania Mail-In Ballots Can Be Thrown Out if Dated Incorrectly


(TargetDailyNews.com) – Pennsylvania election officials are realizing that they have to abide by their own written rules after an appeals court ruledthat undated mail-in ballots may not be counted.
In a March 27th ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit overrode a lower court’s 2023 decision. That earlier decision had ruled that the state must count undated ballots if they were received in time. The lower court had characterized ballots without dates as a “trivial paperwork” mistake. It then went further, arguing that requiring the signatures somehow violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
This latest ruling from the appeals court (a 2-1 decision) reverses that, and points to state law enacted by the legislature. State law requires mail-in ballots to have a signature and a written date in order to be counted as valid. The appeals court wrote that, because the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania had established that this law mandated these signatures (it’s not an optional suggestion), the ballots must include them.