Berks, Fayette and Lancaster counties were ordered to count about 800 mail-in ballots that lack handwritten dates on their return envelopes.
Election volunteers conduct pre-canvassing Nov. 3, 2020, of mail-in and absentee ballots at the Dauphin County Administration Building in Harrisburg. The volunteers inspect the envelopes and separate the privacy envelope from the ballot envelope to prepare ballots for scanning.By MICHAEL RUBINKAM, Associated Press
The law requires voters to date the envelopes. But Commonwealth Court President Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer agreed with Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration that the lack of a date was a minor irregularity and should not result in those voters’ disenfranchisement. The ruling came more than a month after the Wolf administration filed suit against the counties’ election boards to force them to count the undated ballots and certify their results.
“The dating provisions at issue do not expressly provide that such ballots should not be counted, unlike other provisions of the Election Code,” the judge wrote. “When certain provisions of the Election Code do not expressly provide for a consequence of noncompliance, the courts have found that, without something more, such as fear of fraud, the ballot should not be invalidated.”
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