A requirement for Pennsylvania voters to put accurate handwritten dates on the outside envelopes of their mail-in ballots does not run afoul of a civil rights law, a federal appeals court panel said Wednesday, overturning a lower court ruling.
A divided 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled to uphold enforcement of the required date on return envelopes, a technical mandate that caused thousands of votes to be declared invalid in the 2022 election.
The total number is a small fraction of the large state’s electorate, but the court’s ruling puts additional attention on Pennsylvania’s election procedures ahead of a presidential election in which its Electoral College votes are up for grabs.
A lower court judge had ruled in November that even without the proper dates, mail-in ballots should be counted if they are received in time.
U.S. District Judge Susan Paradise Baxter said the envelope date is irrelevant in helping elections officials decide whether a ballot was received in time or if a voter is qualified.
In the court’s opinion, Judge Thomas Ambro said the section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that the lower court relied upon does not pertain to ballot-casting rules broadly, such as dates on envelopes, but “is concerned only with the process of determining a voter’s eligibility to cast a ballot.”
