Election Chaos in Keystone State as Voters Scramble to Fix Invalidated Ballots

A Republican lawsuit that forced a last minute change to election proceedings in Pennsylvania is causing election day chaos in the Keystone State.Long lines formed outside Philadelphia’s city hall Monday night as voters came to set the record straight on ballots that were disqualified because of incorrect information, missing dates, or problems with the secrecy envelope.The chairwoman of Philadelphia’s city commission, Lisa Deeley, released a list of all voters who had their ballot disqualified, and recommended that they report to city hall to fix them if they want their vote to be counted.The issue arose after a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling last week that ballots with inaccurate or illegible dates on the outside secrecy envelope would not be counted in Tuesday’s midterm election.Because voters had such short notice about their ballots being potentially invalidated, long lines formed outside city hall and some had to be turned away by police.“I feel awful for any voters who were turned away after the line into City Hall had to be cut off,” Philadelphia city commissioner Seth Bluestein said. “The staff (including the sheriff’s officers) are doing the best they can to help as many voters as possible with very little time and resources.”There are 3,400 ballots from Philadelphia that will not be counted if voters do not remedy the problems with their ballots before or on election day. The votes could prove consequential in what is expected to be a close race for the Senate.“I am extremely disappointed in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision with regard to undated and incorrectly dated ballots,” Ms. Deeley said Saturday. “Handwritten dates are not material, and the lack of such a date should not be a reason to disenfranchise a voter.”Two similar lists of ballots that might be tossed because of the court’s ruling were published at Allegheny County in Western Pennsylvania, where Pittsburgh is the county seat. There are over 1,000 votes that may not be counted in that county.The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that city election officials are preparing Tuesday for a process known as “poll book reconciliation,” a process implemented to ensure there are no double votes.The process will likely slow down the vote reporting process, which was expected to be completed sometime Wednesday, possibly extending the count through the rest of the week.This state supreme court ruling is expected to be the subject of further scrutiny from the federal court in the Western District of Pennsylvania.The state’s lieutenant governor and the Democratic nominee for Senate, John Fetterrman, filed a federal lawsuit Monday night arguing that the disqualification of ballots for trivial reasons would violate the federal Civil Rights Act.In a statement, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said that the lawsuit in Pennsylvania would be a priority and that they will use “every tool at our disposal to protect Pennsylvanians’ constitutional right to participate in this election.”In the lawsuit, Mr. Fetterman alongside the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee argue that the criteria for disqualification is immaterial. They cite a provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibits election officials from denying the right to vote based on “error or omission on any record or paper relating to any application, registration, or other act requisite to voting.” They also cite a section prohibiting election officials from denying the right to vote based on qualifications that are “not material in determining whether such [an] individual is qualified under State law to vote in such election,” such as the secrecy ballot dating requirement.The new dispute echoes years of litigation on the matter, which the state supreme court settled in 2020 by declaring that undated envelopes would be counted in that year’s election.In the two years since that ruling, there have been multiple legal disputes over the matter, with one going to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that Pennsylvania could count ballots with incorrectly dated security envelopes as long as they were received on time.In a subsequent dispute over primary voting this year, August, a Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court, an appellate level court, ruled that invalidating ballots for problems with the date on the envelope was a violation of the Civil Rights Act. The riders of the Third Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals took the same view in related litigation.Yet in October, the Supreme Court overturned the Third Circuit’s ruling, letting stand the state law that says mail-in ballots have to be dated in order to be counted. Republicans took this opportunity to revisit the question in state court.Because the death of the chief justice of Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court, Max Baer, on October 1, 2022, left an even split on the court, Pennsylvania Republicans again brought the case before the state’s high court on October 16.They argued that state law requires that the security envelopes on ballots must be dated, and that ballots in undated security envelopes should be rejected and left uncounted. Last week, the evenly divided court let stand a lower court ruling that ballots would be set aside if they were undated.The Republican National Committee chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, touted the ruling as a “massive victory for Pennsylvania voters.”“Republicans went to court, and now Democrats and all counties have to follow the law,” she said. “This is a milestone in Republicans’ ongoing efforts to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat in Pennsylvania and nationwide.”

Election Chaos in Keystone State as Voters Scramble to Fix Invalidated Ballots

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