A 'naked ballot' is not as fun as it sounds
Much ado about Pennsylvania mail ballots. Photo: Matt Rourke/AP/Shutterstock It’s been long stipulated that Pennsylvania could be a crucial battleground state in this year’s presidential contest. Trump won its 20 electoral votes by 0.73 percent in 2016, though Democrats had a strong midterm election in 2018. Joe Biden leads Donald Trump in the RealClearPolitics polling averages for the Keystone State by four percent, two-and-a-half points less than his national lead.
Or that was the case until the Pennsylvania Supreme Court handed down a complex set of rulings on a lawsuit by the state Democratic Party to relax several mail ballot restrictions. The big initial headline rulings seemed to favor Democrats . The most important provided that mail ballots received within three days of Election Day that were either postmarked by Election Day or had no legible postmark would not be rejected for late delivery.
As the Philadelphia Inquirer reported, local officials in that city warned that the requirement could lead to the rejection of tens of thousands of otherwise valid ballots, and for no good reason since machines used for initial processing of mail ballots could not read the votes being kept “secret:” It’s unclear what, if anything, Pennsylvania Democrats can do about the “naked ballot” problem, other than publicizing the concern so fewer voters run afoul of it. But Pennsylvania Republicans are already petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down parts of the state court decision on statutory and constitutional grounds.
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