Mark Elias: 🚨BREAKING: Federal court rules that the Pennsylvania date requirement for mail-in ballot violates the First

[BumRushDaShow]

21. This is probably the millionth (exaggerated) case regarding our mail ballots and the dates

Last year, the 3rd Circuit overturned a lower court ruling for the same topic, although that case apparently used a different argument from the OP -

Civil rights groups appeal court ruling on 'undated' Pennsylvania ballots


Updated April 10, 2024 5:12 PM ET
Hansi Lo Wang


Civil rights groups, Pennsylvania's top election official and some local boards of elections are asking a federal appeals court to review a panel's ruling about mail-in ballots that could play a role in determining who wins this year's presidential election and other races in the key swing state.

Mailed ballots that arrive on time but in envelopes without dates handwritten by Pennsylvania voters or with incorrect dates should not be counted, a three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on March 27. Their 2-1 decision strikes down a lower court ruling.

But in a court filing released Wednesday, attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union — which is representing the Pennsylvania State Conference of the NAACP, the lead plaintiff — argue the decision should be revisited because the panel's interpretation of a landmark federal civil rights law "will needlessly disenfranchise thousands of Pennsylvania voters." "If adopted more broadly, it could deny the protection of federal law to literally millions," the attorneys added.

Pennsylvania's secretary of the commonwealth, Al Schmidt, as well as the local election boards for Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and some of the surrounding suburbs, filed a separate request for a rehearing that echoed similar concerns.

(snip)

That May of 2024, the 3rd Circuit refused to rehear that.

Meanwhile, the State Supreme Court (5 D) - 2 (R)) had ruled right before the 2024 election, that the date had to be there (apparently based on a technicality regarding the lower court's jurisdiction) -

Pennsylvania Supreme Court restores date requirement for mail ballots, voiding lower-court ruling


By Carter Walker | September 13, 2024, 4:32pm EDT


Pennsylvanians who vote by mail must write a proper date on their ballot envelopes for their votes to be counted, under a decision Friday from the state Supreme Court that could affect thousands of voters this November.

The decision voids an Aug. 30 Commonwealth Court ruling that enforcing the requirement on ballot dating violated voters’ rights under the state constitution. The Supreme Court’s 4–3 decision was based on whether the lower court had jurisdiction in the case, not on the merits of the underlying claim, meaning that the constitutional argument could be made again in court.

Republicans who appealed the lower court’s decision argued to the state Supreme Court last week that the petitioners failed to include all counties as parties to the case, among other claims. The original suit, brought by the ACLU of Pennsylvania and the Public Interest Law Center on behalf of a coalition of voting rights groups, targeted the Department of State, Allegheny County, and Philadelphia.

“The Commonwealth Court lacked subject matter jurisdiction to review the matter given the failure to name the county boards of elections of all 67 counties,” the Supreme Court wrote in its order Friday. The inclusion of Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt as a named party was not enough to give the Commonwealth Court jurisdiction in the case, the order said.

(snip)

The State Supreme Court will apparently revisit this AGAIN -

Pennsylvania high court to take up long-running dispute over mail-in ballots’ return envelope dates


By MARK SCOLFORO
Updated 4:05 PM EDT, January 17, 2025


HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The Pennsylvania Supreme Court said Friday it will again consider whether voters should have to write the accurate date on return envelopes used to send their completed mail-in ballots to be counted. The requirement in state law has generated more than a half-dozen court cases in the past four years, including several that reached the state Supreme Court.

The justices said they will decide whether the dating rule for absentee and mail ballot return envelopes violates a state constitutional provision that elections must be free and equal.

“The constitutional challenge in this appeal is based on the fact, established through years of litigation, that the dating requirements advance no ‘weighty interest’ and serve no purpose in the election process,” wrote Justice Christine Donohue, one of five Democrats on the seven-justice court.

Donohue, joined by one other Democrat, argued the court’s decision to take the case should have gone further and addressed “enforcement of the dating requirements before embarking on an analysis of its constitutionality.” The case involves 69 mail-in ballots from two state House special elections that a Philadelphia judge had said should be counted even though they lacked a handwritten date on the return envelope.

(snip)

After the 2024 election, the SCOTUS refused to hear the dangling appeal of the 3rd Circuit -

US Supreme Court turns away Pennsylvania mail-in ballot dispute

By Andrew Chung
January 21, 2025 9:49 AM EST Updated 2 months ago


Jan 21 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Tuesday to hear a bid by civil and voting rights groups to end Pennsylvania's mandate that mail-in ballots bear a handwritten date on the outer envelope, a requirement they contend is unnecessary and has resulted in needless disqualification of legitimate ballots. The justices turned away an appeal by the plaintiffs of a lower court's ruling that upheld the requirement and rejected the argument that it violated a provision in federal law that bars discarding ballots due to paperwork errors that are "not material" in determining whether a person is qualified to vote.

The Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2024 decided that the date requirement "serves little apparent purpose" as it is not used by officials to determine whether it was received on time. Nevertheless, it remains valid because the 1964 Civil Rights Act applies only to voter registration rules when a state is determining who is qualified to vote, not "how a qualified voter must cast his ballot for it to be counted," the 3rd Circuit ruled.

Pennsylvania often is pivotal in determining the outcome of presidential elections, as it again was last year. Republican President Donald Trump won the state over his Democratic rival Kamala Harris in November after losing it to Democrat Joe Biden four years earlier.

The requirement at issue affects voters in Pennsylvania who cast ballots by mail. It mandates that they place their secret ballot into an outer return envelope, on which they must sign and date a declaration that they are qualified to vote. Plaintiffs including the Pennsylvania State Conference of the NAACP, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, sued state and county election officials in 2022 under what is called the Civil Rights Act's materiality provision.

(snip)

And the beat goes on...