Pennsylvania Court Throws Out Ruling Requiring Misdated Ballots to Count

Pennsylvania’s highest court on Friday threw out a lower-court ruling that would have required election officials in the state’s two most-populous counties to count otherwise valid mail-in ballots that had the incorrect date or no date at all on the outer envelope.

In a brief, two-page order, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court declined to rule on the merits of the case, which was brought by a coalition of voters’ rights groups. Instead, it found that the lower court, the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, lacked jurisdiction in its order last month because the lawsuit named only Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties, and not all of the state’s 67 counties, as defendants.

Friday’s ruling means that state election officials will not be counting misdated or undated ballots in the general election unless the courts decide to intervene again between now and Nov. 5. The plaintiffs could file a new lawsuit that tries to address the jurisdiction issue, but whether they will do so is unclear.

Three of the court’s seven justices dissented, writing that the State Supreme Court should have exercised its special jurisdiction as Pennsylvania’s highest court to decide the case because “a prompt and definitive ruling” on the date question “is of paramount public importance.”

In a statement, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of State called the ruling “disappointing,” saying that it “leaves unanswered the important question of whether the dating requirement violates the Pennsylvania Constitution, as the Commonwealth Court found.”

The ruling could have a substantial impact on the presidential race in the battleground state. With about seven weeks to go until the election, most polls show Pennsylvania to be a tossup between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump. President Biden won the state by just over 81,000 votes in 2020.