In Pennsylvania, Every Vote Counts, But Is Every Vote Counted?
October 31, 2024
By: Natalie Hatton
Imagine a voter in Pennsylvania, an essential swing state in the upcoming presidential election. Imagine he decides to vote by mail because he is immunocompromised, he lives far from his polling place, or he will be out of town in November. He fills out his ballot but misdates the outer envelope, writing his date of birth instead of today’s date. He puts it in the mail weeks ahead of the deadline. Will his vote be counted? Will his county board of elections notify him of the error and allow him to cure his ballot? The answer: it depends.
Currently, there is no uniformity between counties on ballot curing procedures, and while some counties allow it, others do not. Pennsylvania is the only state in the country that allows ballot curing procedures to be decided on the county level, resulting in a patchwork of ballot curing rules across the state.
This could have significant ramifications for November’s election. With 1.4 million Pennsylvanians requesting to vote by mail in the 2022 midterms, and more expected to be voting by mail in this year’s presidential election, an ongoing legal fight over ballot curing continues in the must-win state of Pennsylvania.
On August 30, a Commonwealth Court ruled that throwing out misdated or unsigned ballots violated the state’s constitutional right to vote: “The refusal to count undated or incorrectly dated but timely mail ballots submitted by otherwise eligible voters because of meaningless and inconsequential paperwork errors violates the fundamental right to vote recognized in the free and equal elections clause.”
Then, on September 13, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court vacated that court’s decision for lack of jurisdiction. In a two-page opinion, it ruled that the Commonwealth Court lacked subject matter jurisdiction to review the case because the plaintiffs failed to sue all sixty-seven counties. But the fight may not be over: the ACLU of Pennsylvania, who brought the lawsuit, say they are regrouping, “It’s a purely procedural decision, nothing on the merits.”
Even more recently, on September 18, the RNC and Republican Party of Pennsylvania filed a lawsuit asking the court to go even further and rule that the county-by-county system is unlawful because the General Assembly has not granted them that authority.
It is not surprising that Republicans would prefer ballots not be cured, as mail-in voting skews liberal in Pennsylvania. Allegheny, Montgomery, and Philadelphia counties (the counties encompassing urban, liberal Pittsburgh and Philadelphia) historically have had the highest levels of mail-in voting. Former President Trump recently set the stage for sowing doubt about Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting scheme, posting on Truth Social that “20% of the Mail-In Ballots in Pennsylvania are fraudulent” and “We will WIN Pennsylvania by a lot, unless the Dems are allowed to CHEAT.” Indeed, the legal fight in Pennsylvania reflects a wider Republican campaign to interrupt mail-in voting in other swing states.
In a state that was won by 1.16% – or 80,555 votes – in 2020, every vote truly does count.