The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered Tuesday that county boards of elections segregate and “refrain from counting” mail-in ballots with missing or incorrect dates on the outer envelope.
What’s next? Only ballots marked with black ink will be accepted?
Obviously any other ink color must be a fraudulent vote.
The system requires people operating in good faith, Republicans are pushing it way past the breaking point.
JFC. I’m old enough to remember when votes were counted as long as the intent of the voter was clear.
We use paper ballots in my county. When I was told that I did an excellent job in filling in the squares, I responded with: “I read the directions”. So now I know why the two people in front of me got sent back, they needed to fill in their squares correctly. Hell I’m not of the age where we were regularly forced to take standardized test. I must have a knack for filling in squares correctly. 
This is insane and disgusting. And who decides what an “incorrect date”? What if someone uses the European way of writing dates – would that nullify the franchise? This makes me sick to my stomach. These psychopaths will stop at nothing to destroy democracy, as per Putin’s directive.
“If we don’t cheat, we can’t win.”
— Every Rethugliklan ever
The ‘for now’ part gives one pause.
They have only one week to figure out what ‘for now’ means.
There’s no way to tell for which party that ballot is being cast, so there’s no way to know in advance who gets hurt by this.
Whether at the PA state or federal level, Republican Supreme Court ‘justices’ can be relied upon to be loyal team players, and advance GOP interests.
As the article says, Democrats use mail in ballots far more often than Republicans.
The Pennsylvania court is down to six members after its chief justice died suddenly earlier this month.
I’m going out on a limb that “this month” refers to October because otherwise, that was very sudden indeed.
On a more serious note, I can’t wrap my head around how the date on the outer envelope can be “material” to the ballot since once the ballot is removed from the envelope, all you have is a valid ballot and no way to tie it to an invalidly dated envelope.
Totally off topic
Have these people never comforted a child or needed comfort as an adult? I pity them and their shrunken, cold hearts.
ETA - I guess they forgot to add clips of seniors in nursing homes with support animals. That would have been good for more laughs.
A good recipe for creating extremely brittle human beings who “look tough” but are probably on the verge of a breakdown with the right sort of nudge.
“We hereby direct that the Pennsylvania county boards of elections segregate and preserve any ballots contained in undated or incorrectly dated outer envelopes”
Dumb question. Why?
How does that verify anything about the legitimacy of the ballot either way?
I doubt Republicans are any more or less careful than Dems to make mistakes.
Again, dating envelopes is only required for mail in ballots and Democrats in PA use mail in ballots about 3x more often.
Arguably, the signature and date have to match records and show the current election date period. If validated, the ballot envelope can be opened and counted, as there should be no personal markings on the ballot itself.
The date is unnecessary and redundant, as there are barcodes that identify the election date and the ballot validity. Additionally, format of date can be used to nullify the ballot. This is ballot suppression. Period.
I live in MA and vote by mail or drop-off when possible.
The ballot arrives by mail, with two envelopes, inner and outer. The ballot has no personal identifying information on it, and is not dated. The inner envelope has a barcode and the voter’s name, and must be signed by the voter. The outer envelope is a mailer.
I don’t remember if the inner envelope has to be dated, but if the sealed (undated) envelope arrives in timely fashion (neither too early nor too late), what difference does an errant date marking make? How does this open the door to fraud or any nefarious activity?
Rights should not be stripped away from citizens on a technicality.
This college cat story reminds me of when I took my cat to school one day. She rode on my shoulder and I brought her into astronomy class. There happened also to be a violin-playing busker outside, playing rather nicely. However, this all was just too much for the professor who flipped out utterly, shouting “No cats! No music!”
I felt sort of sorry for him — he had no joie de vivre. I took my cat outside and placed her in a tree to wait for me until I got out of class, which she did.
