Daily News | Pennsylvania court orders end to primary election stalemate: Count the undated mail ballots
A staffer looked through a stack of mail ballots as Philadelphia elections officials decided which votes to count or reject in the May 17 primary election.A Pennsylvania judge ordered three counties to count undated mail ballots in their certified results for the primary election, breaking a standoff between those counties and the Department of State.
Berks, Fayette, and Lancaster Counties had been locked in a stalemate with the Pennsylvania Department of State over whether to count undated mail ballots. The disagreement has delayed certification of the May 17 primary for months. But the state, relying on new federal and state court rulings, said undated ballots should be counted — at least in this election, and potentially in all of them moving forward. The Department of State repeatedly pressed counties to count undated ballots, and most ultimately counted them.
In underscoring the state’s lack of power — or clear mechanism for resolving a conflict — the standoff has further exposed weaknesses in the electoral system, and specifically the certification process, that may once have been theoretical and academic but are now concrete vulnerabilities. Lehigh County’s undated mail ballots in last November’s election became the subject of a state lawsuit and then a federal one. And days after this year’s primary, it was that federal lawsuit that briefly shook a recount in the Republican Senate primary: A federal appeals court ruled that rejecting undated mail ballots amounted to throwing out ballots on a technicality, violating federal civil rights law.
Pennsylvania election law doesn’t have a specific mechanism for breaking such a stalemate. That leaves it ultimately the courts.The ruling could be a significant change — what happens next?
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