Judges: State’s mail-in voting law violates Pennsylvania constitution
HARRISBURG, PA. — A court declared Friday that Pennsylvania’s expansive 2-yearold mail-in voting law violates the state constitution, agreeing with challenges by Republicans who soured on the practice after former President Donald Trump began baselessly attacked it as rife with fraud in his 2020 reelection campaign.
Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration swiftly appealed to the state Supreme Court, immediately putting the party-line decision by a panel of three Republican and two Democratic judges on hold and stopping it from overturning the law.
Still, it throws Pennsylvania’s voting laws into doubt as the presidential battleground state’s voters prepare to elect a new governor and a new U.S. senator in 2022.
Just over 2.5 million people voted under the law’s expansion of mail-in voting in 2020’s presidential election, most of them Democrats, out of 6.9 million total cast.
Wolf ’s office said its appeal means the lower court ruling has no immediate effect, and criticized Republicans as trying to kill the law “in the service of the ‘big lie’ ” of Trump’s unverified election fraud claims.
“We need leaders to support removing more barriers to voting, not trying to silence the people,” Wolf ’s office said.
Trump and Republicans quickly lauded the decision.
“Big news out of Pennsylvania, great patriotic spirit is developing at a level that nobody thought possible. Make America Great Again!” Trump said in a statement through his political action committee.
The mail-in voting law has become a hot topic on the campaign trail, with nearly every Republican candidate for governor — including two of three state senators who voted for it — vowing to repeal it.
In Friday’s decision, the three Republican judges agreed with GOP challengers — including 11 lawmakers who had voted for the law — and ruled that no-excuse mail-in voting is prohibited under the state constitution, until the constitution is changed to allow it.
The two Democrats on the panel dissented. The state Supreme Court — which will hear the appeal — has a 5-2 Democratic majority.