Pennsylvania sued over undated mail-in ballots

The NAACP and several other voting-rights groups sued Pennsylvania election officials Friday in federal court as part of an eleventh-hour effort to get them to accept mail-in ballots that are received on time but are not properly dated.

The step came three days after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered counties in the battleground state to refrain from counting mailin ballots that lack a written date on their outer envelope, siding with Republicans in a matter that could have national implications Tuesday.

The Republican National Committee and several other party-aligned groups had filed a lawsuit in October to stop undated ballots from being counted, citing a state law that requires voters to write the date on the return envelope when sending it in.

But the plaintiffs in the voting-rights coalition contend that rejecting ballots based on what they see as an immaterial matter violates the voting protections in the federal Civil Rights Act.

“Defendants’ failure to count timely- submitted mail-in ballots based solely on a missing or incorrect date on the return envelope will disenfranchise potentially thousands of voters,” the groups wrote Friday in their 26-page filing in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

Their lawsuit named as a defendant Leigh Chapman, a Democrat and acting secretary of the commonwealth and the state’s top election official, despite guidance she issued in September that said ballots without a date on them should be counted as long as they are returned on time.

Chapman’s office did not immediately respond Saturday to a request for comment.

The lawsuit also named the election boards in all 67 Pennsylvania counties as defendants.

The RNC is expecting to intervene in the matter, according to Emma Vaughn, a spokesperson for the group.

On Tuesday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said that noncompliant ballots should be set aside. But the six justices were split about whether their rejection violated the voting protections of the federal Civil Rights Act.

Three Democrats on the elected court said that it did violate federal law, while a fourth Democrat, Kevin Dougherty, joined the court’s two Republicans in saying that it did not. The court typically has seven members, but Chief Justice Max Baer, a Democrat, died in September.

Pennsylvania is where two of the most closely watched elections in the country will be decided this upcoming week.

In the governor’s race, Josh Shapiro, the state’s Democratic attorney general, faces state Sen. Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee. Control of the U.S. Senate could hinge on the outcome of the contest between celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Republican, and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat.

The issue of undated ballots was a major point of contention in Oz’s primary in May, which was decided by fewer than 1,000 votes and prompted an automatic recount.

Oz had opposed the counting of about 850 undated ballots in that race. His opponent, David McCormick, sued to include the ballots, calling the date requirement irrelevant. He later conceded the race.

A Republican judicial candidate who lost in Lehigh County sued last year to stop undated ballots from being counted in that contest, a case that escalated all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In May, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit in Philadelphia ruled against that candidate, David Ritter. The Supreme Court said in June that election officials in Pennsylvania may count mailed ballots that are received by the cutoff date but not dated. But in early October, the Supreme Court vacated the appeals court ruling.

County election boards must receive mail-in ballots by 8 p.m. on Election Day. Otherwise, they won’t be counted.