Ballots can’t be tossed out over voter signature, court says
HARRISBURG » Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court ruled unanimously Friday on a key concern surrounding an avalanche of mailed ballots, prohibiting counties from rejecting them if the voter’s signature on it does not resemble the signature on the voter’s registration form.
Two Republican justices joined five Democratic justices in the decision.
The verdictwas a victory for the state’s top election official, Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat who had asked the court to back her up in a legal disputewith President Donald Trump’s campaign andRepublican lawmakers.
“County boards of elections are prohibited from rejecting absentee or mailin ballots based on signature comparison conducted by county election officials or employees, or as the result of third-party challenges based on signature analysis and comparisons,” the justices wrote.
Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden are locked in a battle to win Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes. With Democrats voting by mail at an almost 3-to-1 rate over Republicans, the prospect of disqualified ballots poses a greater threat to Biden’s candidacy.
In her court filing, Boockvar had said that any such rejections pose “a grave risk of disenfranchisement on an arbitrary and wholly subjective basis,” and without any opportunity for a voter to verify their signature before their ballot is disqualified.
Republican lawmakers and the Trump campaign had argued that the law is clear that election officialsmust compare the information on themail-in ballot envelope, including a voter’s signature, to a voter’s information on file to determine a person’s qualifications to vote.
But the justices disagreed, as did a federal judge in a separate case brought earlier by Trump’s campaign. Both said that the lawonmail-in ballotsmakes it clear only that the ballot envelope requires the voter’s signature, but not a matching signature.
Pennsylvania has no law mandating that voters get an opportunity to fix an irregularity with their ballot before it is disqualified, and discussions about it in the Legislature in recent weeks deadlocked in a wider partisan fight shadowed by the presidential election.
In a statement, Pennsylvania’s attorney general, Democrat Josh Shapiro, called the decision a “win for voters.”
Voters who use a mail-in ballot have their identity verified in their initial application, often using a driver’s license number, he said.
“Pennsylvania’s voter identification system is safe and secure,” he said. “We are protecting every eligible vote and ensuring each is counted.”
SenateMajority Leader Jake Corman, R-Centre, accused Boockvar of undermining election security provisions in state law and said lawmakers never thought it could be interpreted to render “signatures required on the mail-in ballots being meaningless.”
“People voting in person are now being held to a higher standard than those who mail in their ballots,” he said in a statement.