A 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled Wednesday that Pennsylvania can disregard mailed ballots that were received in time for the election but that lack a date or list an incorrect date on the outer envelope — despite all parties agreeing that election offices don’t actually use that handwritten date.
Pure desperation. Rethugliklans can’t win legitimately so they’ll grasp at any straw.
“Adding a layer of surrealism to the ruling, Ambro made plain that the majority finds the handwritten date requirement, which is not used at all to determine a ballot’s validity, pointless — but maintains that the thousands of ballots that will inevitably lack or have the wrong date should be thrown out.”
WT (and I cannot stress this enough) F?!
It’s like I’ve woken up in the United States of Kafka.
Democracy ends not with a bang, but with 2-1 ruling that outright admits it doesn’t make any sense?
Our judicial branch is perilously close to forfeiting its legitimacy – and Dog help us if that happens.
If that includes envelopes with a postmark then the judgement becomes something worse than specious.
And the ballots were specified as having been received timely! Egads.
How will it be known if a date on a ballot is incorrect?
An odd decision, given that all the judges were appointed by Democrats.
In a sane world, PA would simply change its law and eliminate the date on the ballot or stipulate that a missing or incorrect date shall not constitute a reason to disallow a ballot, but the PA Senate is Republican and I can’t imagine it would pass such a law, even if the narrow Democratic majority in the House did, and Governor Shapiro were willing to sign it (both likely).
A party that spends so much energy trying to prevent ballots from being cast rather than competing for those ballots is a dead husk. The sooner the GOP is buried, the better.
In Arizona we hafta sign and date the envelope the ballot goes in. Then seal it and put it in an outer envelope. The signature on a ballot envelope is checked against one on file
Part and parcel of the same bullshit in my state that makes you:
Every little roadblock they can vomit up, the Republicans will do so.
Same. And since TFG spread his nonsense about voting mail fraud it’s only gotten worse. I hope it blows back on them this time even worse.
“One can only hope that election officials do not capitalize on the Majority’s narrow interpretation of the Materiality Provision by enacting unduly technical and immaterial post-registration paperwork requirements that could silence the voices of qualified voters,” Shwartz concluded ominously.
I’d say comically narrow/surreal rulings + hope is definitely a reliable foundation for our democracy to rest on.
Or any bamboo fiber.
The majority appears to have it right, at least according to the text of the statute:
Determining whether a ballot was filled out correctly is not a determination whether the person casting it is qualified to vote.
Just a cynical attempt to panda to Trump voters!
Same in WA state -we sign and date the envelope not the ballot.
ETA: Can undated ballots be cured?
America - the absolute leader in discouraging actual voting in a democracy.
I’m confused. I’m not understanding what is being debated here, and who has ruled on what exactly.
A voter mails in a ballot, and the envelope is supposed to have a handwritten date on it, which I assume is the date that the voter filled out the ballot? Or mailed it? This date may or may not agree with the postmark on the envelope. Is that the comparison being made in determining whether the ballot should even be considered? That’s what it sounds like in one part of the article at least.
But then previous rulings by the Penn SC (if I understand correctly) say that any mistake in this regard is immaterial to the soundness of the ballot, since that handwritten date is “not used”. But it sounds some “lower court” below that 3rd Circuit that is NOT the Penn SC also agreed that it is immaterial? But now the 3rd Circuit is saying, yes it IS material, and therefore mistakes in the handwritten date on the envelope (which I still don’t understand how those would be determined or what that date even means) cancel out the ballot completely.
This is such anti-democratic, fascist bullshit that I cannot fathom how 2 Democrat-appointed justices agreed with it, and overruled earlier court decisions.
Maybe they got paid. Maybe Putin dug through their trash.
The GOP are practically unopposed because we don’t have the money to fund these endless lawsuits and nitty gritty gambits.
These people are shit.
This (dumb; detached-from-reality) ruling is likely to hurt Repub voters as much as Dems, given that they are embracing mail-in voting more and more.
This is the kind of thing that makes it feel so much like those nightmares I had about quicksand as a child. The majority of people in this country agree that Trump is completely unfit for the presidency, yet here we are.
The call really is coming from inside the house.
“One can only hope that election officials do not capitalize on the Majority’s narrow interpretation of the Materiality Provision by enacting unduly technical and immaterial post-registration paperwork requirements that could silence the voices of qualified voters,” Shwartz concluded ominously.
We all know what is coming next.