Discarding mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania violated voters’ constitutional rights, 3rd Circuit rules
A Pennsylvania law requiring election officials to toss mail-in ballots if they contain missing or incorrect dates impermissibly burdens the constitutional right to vote, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Philadelphia ruled Tuesday.
The appeals court upheld a decision that found that state interests advanced by the date requirement—enhancing election efficiency, promoting solemnity or preventing voter fraud—did not justify the burden on the right to vote. Tossing the ballots violates voters’ rights under the First Amendment and the 14th Amendment, the 3rd Circuit concluded in its Aug. 26 opinion.
Republican groups that intervened in the case had produced only one instance of voter fraud involving a mail-in ballot, the appeals court said. It involved a woman convicted for completing and mailing the ballot of her recently deceased mother. The county had already removed the dead woman from the voter rolls by the time that it received the ballot.
Under Pennsylvania’s system, voters who want to use mail-in ballots must submit a copy of a photo ID to the county election board along with other information. Voters who are approved must put their mail-in ballot in a secrecy envelope that is in turn placed in a larger preaddressed return envelope with a unique bar code. The return envelope also contains a declaration that the voter is eligible to vote, which must be signed and dated. Ballots must be received by 8 p.m. on Election Day.
Interpreting the statute, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that ballots with a wrong date or missing information in the date field cannot be counted. County election boards don’t have to provide notice that a ballot was rejected because of a date error, and voters aren’t entitled to cure the deficiency.
The 3rd Circuit said the date requirement “causes thousands of ballots to be discarded and can leave voters without a means to cast a valid ballot.” Even though the proffered state interests are legitimate, “we see only tangential links, at best, between these interests and the date requirement,” the appeals court said.
The plaintiffs challenging the requirement were represented by the Elias Law Group.
“The court recognized what we’ve long argued: that discarding otherwise valid ballots over trivial errors that have nothing to do with the voter’s eligibility is a violation of voters’ fundamental constitutional rights,” said Uzoma Nkwonta, a partner at the Elias Law Group, in an Aug. 26 press release.
The case is Eakin v. Adams County Board of Elections.
Publications covering the decision include Law360 and Reuters.
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