Pennsylvania Lower State Court Allows Revival of Lawsuit Over Validity of Absentee Ballots with No Date on Back of Envelope

Posted on by September 20, 2024

On September 18, a Pennsylvania state trial court revived the lawsuit Black Political Empowerment Project v Schmidt. The issue is the Pennsylvania law that requires absentee voters to fill in the date on the back of the envelope. The Commonwealth Court had ruled that such votes may be counted, but then on September 13 the State Supreme Court reversed on procedural grounds, because the Plaintiffs had not sued all 67 counties.

Then the lower court allowed the plaintiffs to amend their complaint and sue all the counties, so the case can be revived. See this story.

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Pennsylvania Lower State Court Allows Revival of Lawsuit Over Validity of Absentee Ballots with No Date on Back of Envelope — 18 Comments

  3. https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2024/09/20/rfk-jr-plans-federal-appeal-in-effort-to-remove-name-from-michigan-ballot/75308603007/

    RFK Jr. plans to appeal to Sixth Circuit in effort to remove name from Michigan ballot
    Beth LeBlanc
    The Detroit News
    Former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is continuing his fight to have his name removed from the Michigan ballot in the November general election.
    On Friday, Kennedy notified U.S. District Court Judge Denise Page Hood in a filing that he would be appealing her Wednesday decision to the Sixth Circuit of Appeals.
    Hood ruled Wednesday that Kennedy’s request seeking a court order would “interrupt the election process because he no longer wants to participate.”
    “Reprinting ballots at this late hour would undoubtedly halt the voting process in Michigan and cause a burden to election officials,” Hood wrote in her decision. She noted at the time that 90% of the ballots in Michigan had already been printed.
    —
    HOW MANY RFK JR ON/OFF MACHINATIONS ??? OVER 100 ???

  6. Black Political Empowerment Project. Assuming black people are too stupid to write the date on the envelope isn’t empowering, it’s insulting and racist.

    This is just an excuse to “fix” the election in post by suddenly producing as many absentee ballots as needed. That’s much easier to get away with when there isn’t a timestamped paper trail to follow up.

  7. If Pennsylvania doesn’t stop the practice of counting absentee ballots without dates, then we need to fight this all the way to the top.

  8. AGAIN –

    ABS = SUBSTITUTE FOR IN PERSON VOTING ON E DAYS

    SHOULD BE COUNTED ONLY IF RECEIVED BY CLOSE OF POLLS ON E DAYS
    —-
    STOP ALL NON ABS MAIL FOR X DAYS BEFORE E DAYS ???

    LATEST PICK UP AND DELIVERY ON E DAYS IN LOCAL ZIP CODE AREA ??? 10 AM ??? / 5 PM ???

  13. AC —

    ABS — FLAT SURFACE AT HOME
    VS
    PETS — NOT FLAT SURFACES AT STORES / ETC — PLUS – SIGNERS DO NOT KNOW IF REGISTERED FOR SURE

  14. @Adam Cerini

    Consider the difference in the scenarios under which the signing happens:

    When preparing your mail-in ballot in the comfort of your home, you take your time to leisurely fill out your ballot, sign and date your envelope, then check and double-check everything before sending it off.

    Whereas the signatures on petitions are typically collected outside the home, or at most door to door, not at the time of your choice, not at your leisure, etc. So you are much more likely to rush filling out the petition form, to just get back to doing what you were.

    The second scenario will lead to a (much) higher rejection rate.

    In addition, I suspect that unfortunately most boards of elections will typically be far more rigorous/fussy about signatures on petitions than about those on mail-in ballots.

  15. I vote absentee ballot all the time and never had one rejected. Then again, I’m White and know how to follow instruction. Dumb non=Whites.

  17. @AC,

    Persons voting by mail generally have to request a mail ballot, and are already registered. If they have moved, they will likely have their address updated when they request the ballot. The personalized ballot will be sent to them. Return is an odd procedure, ballot inside the security envelope which is placed inside the return envelope, which must be signed (generally across the seal). This is intended to prove that voter placed the ballot inside. In Pennsylvania, the signature had to be dated. I’m guessing that this was just like dating a signature which you may have done 100s of times. In Pennsylvania, the ballot has to be returned by the election day deadline, so the date does not prove that you filled out the ballot on or before election date.

    Election officials generally want people to vote, so they won’t carefully scrutinize the signature. It is somewhat hard to get hold of a large number of mail ballots, so if there is vote fraud, it is a spouse, child, or caretaker voting for Jefferson instead of Burr who was preferred by the voter.

    Some voters will misplace the ballot, or complete it too late. Some of this is because of real life conflicts like a sudden illness. But for other votes it will be a matter of personal habits. Voters who are always late paying bills, losing important papers, missing appointments, are more likely to not sign and date the outer envelope. They tend to be more careless. By not returning the ballot at all, or not on time, they reduce the error rate.

    Petition signers are typically contacted by circulators who they don’t know, and have an incentive to get signatures, whether because they are being paid, or are volunteers for a candidate. Signers might not know whether they are registered, or forget that they have moved three times since they last voted 12 years ago. They may fib about not being registered. “I was convicted for an axe murder back when I was a teenager,” is not something you readily admit. Voters won’t remember signing a petition. Or they may remember, but believe they are helping the cause by signing multiple times. Some signers may want to mess up a petition. Some voters may give a fake address since they don’t want the circulator to know where they live. Multiple signatures are on a single sheet of paper, so that mass fraud is easier.

    Election officials may not like initiatives. Petition challengers certainly don’t.

  18. Fraud is harder, not easier, with multiple signatures on a page. Anything that can be done fraudulently with multiple signatures per page can be done with one signature per page. The only difference is you can shuffle an indefinite number of pages to make patterns of handwriting harder to detect.

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