Pennsylvania asks court to extend mail-in ballot deadlines
HARRISBURG — Citing a warning by the U.S. Postal Service about its delivery times, Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration is asking the state Supreme Court to extend deadlines for mail-in ballots to be received in the November election when Pennsylvania will be a premier presidential battleground.
The filing, submitted after-hours Thursday to the state’s highest court, cited a letter dated July 29 by the general counsel of the U.S. Postal Service, Thomas Marshall.
In it, Mr. Marshall warns that Pennsylvania’s mail-in ballot deadlines are “incongruous” with the postal service’s delivery standards, and he recommended that voters mail in their ballots a week before the deadline for them to be received and counted.
“This filing was simply an effort to make sure that ballots requested close to the application deadline, which is what the postal office really focused on in their letter ... can be counted should there be any delay by the postal service,” Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said in a conference call with reporters Friday.
The deadline, under current law, is the close of polls on Election Day, Nov. 3, at 8 p.m. But the Wolf administration pointed out that state law allows voters to apply for a mail-in ballot up until a week before the deadline, never mind mail it in.
“To state it simply: Voters who apply for mail-in ballots in the last week of the application period and return their complete ballot by mail will, through no fault of their own, likely be disenfranchised,” Wolf administration lawyers wrote in the filing.
As a result, the administration is asking the state Supreme Court to order that ballots postmarked by 8 p.m. on Nov. 3 be counted if they are valid and received during the three days following the election.
Ballots received during those three days but lacking a postmark or legible proof of mailing should also be counted, the administration’s lawyers wrote.
Ms. Boockvar said the Department of State is encouraging all voters to apply for mail-in ballots and “return them as soon as they are received in September or October, whether you return it in person or by mail.” She also noted that once the ballot is finalized, voters can go to
their county elections offices and complete the process there — all in one visit.
The department is also urging the state Legislature to statutorily extend the deadline, Ms. Boockvar said.
“As long as we reach the resolution of making sure every voter has confidence in their ability to cast their vote on time, I’m happy for it to go through the Legislature,” Ms. Boockvar said. “We’ve been already advocating for that.”
The court filing came the same day that President Donald Trump acknowledged that he is cutting U.S. Postal Service money, which would make it harder to process an expected surge of mail-in ballots.
Also late Thursday, U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan in Pittsburgh gave the president’s campaign until Friday to turn over evidence to support its claims of widespread mail-in voting fraud or admit that it doesn’t exist.
The Trump campaign and Republican National Committee sued Ms. Boockvar and local election boards June 29, claiming their mail-in balloting plan “provides fraudsters an easy opportunity to engage in ballot harvesting, manipulate or destroy ballots, manufacture duplicitous votes, and sow chaos.”
Judge Ranjan on Thursday asked the campaign to put forward previous examples of such fraud. “Plaintiffs shall produce such evidence in their possession, and if they have none, state as much,” he said.
The Trump campaign and the Republican Party also are suing in federal court in Pennsylvania to block the use of drop boxes, which were used in some counties in the primary to make it easier for voters to submit mailin ballots on time.
The Wolf administration’s filing comes after county election offices received thousands of mailed-in ballots following the close of polls in the June 2 primary election.
That election was the first test of a 2019 state law that allows voters to mail in a ballot without an excuse that meets narrowly tailored definitions in state law. However, demand for mail-in ballots skyrocketed during the pandemic, as voters preferred to vote by mail rather than go to a polling station in person.
More than 1.4 million Pennsylvanians voted by mail in the primary, or about half, smashing a state record made possible by the sweeping new election law Mr. Wolf signed last fall.
In the 2016 presidential election, 6.1 million voters cast ballots, as Mr. Trump’s narrow victory in Pennsylvania helped pave his path to the White House.