Three "Yuge" Reasons Why Pennsylvania's Absentee Ballot Date Requirement Matters

Topic: Elections

In what seemed like a minor decision on paper yesterday, the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld a previous decision regarding date requirements for Pennsylvania absentee ballots.  While it may sound trivial, that absentee ballot envelopes be postmarked and the inner enveloped signed and dated within the appropriate time frame (in this case, 50 days before an election, or no later than Election Day, November 5), judging by the howling of the kicked dogs, it must be quite a big deal.

In the initial ruling, Judge Thomas Ambro found little purpose for the date requirement, but since it was ruled mandatory by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, he saw fit to keep it in place (imagine that, a judge exercising restraint):

The date requirement, it turns out, serves little apparent purpose.  It is not used to confirm timely receipt of the ballot or to determine when the voter completed it.  But the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruled that dating the envelope is mandatory, and undated or misdated ballots are invalid under its state law and must be set aside.

It shouldn’t be too hard to date an envelope, right?  Of course it isn’t hard, but since this action was brought by the Pennsylvania State Conference of NAACP and the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania, both Democrat loyalists, it tells me where there is smoke, there is fire.  In an argument much longer than should be necessary, these two victim groups took the scenic route in making the plea to the court that somehow a date requirement would somehow disenfranchise minority voters in the same way poll taxes or literacy tests did in decades gone by.

To make heads or tails of this issue, I called Toni Shuppe, co-founder of Audit the Vote Pennsylvania and one of the most critical cogs in the election integrity universe, and in one of the most critical states.  It is clear, that even though the date requirement isn’t the end all, be all of whether a ballot is accepted by a county, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, at least at one point in time, recognized that extra safety measures were likely to deter malfeasance and fraudulent activity when it came to presiding over a mail-in balloting system that is already wide-open to new pathways for cheating.  Toni and I discussed this ruling and what it means for 2024, and Toni said that it would have given Pennsylvania’s 20 (now 19) electors to Trump in 2020 had it been properly enforced.

Pennsylvania’s election managers have a peculiar way of keeping records.  Voters may exercise the right to vote up to 50 days before Election Day, and a vote cast in that early window is recorded as “absentee.”  However, those mailing in the ballot must not only have that ballot postmarked within the appropriate window (between September 16 and November 5 this year) but must also sign and date the inner security envelope.  This is where logic takes over:

Three Reasons Pennsylvania’s Absentee Date Requirement Matters