Pennsylvania voting rights groups have been joined by the Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth, in an attempt to persuade the Third Circuit to rehear Pennsylvania State Conference of the NAACP Branches v Secretary, 23-3166. This is the case over whether the “materiality” portion of the 1964 federal Civil Rights Law should invalidate a Pennsylvania law on dates written on the outer envelopes of postal ballots. The law says if the voter doesn’t date the outer envelope of his or her returned ballot, the ballot cannot be counted. The Third Circuit last month upheld the legality of the Pennsylvania law in a 2-1 decision.

The “materiality” part of the Civil Rights Law says no one should be prevented from voting because of some error that is not really meaningful. The majority opinion of the Third Circuit says this only applies to laws that stop individuals from voting, but it doesn’t apply to whether that vote should be counted.

In presidential years, Washington elects a partisan statewide office called Commissioner of Public Lands. Recently a Washington Democratic State Senator, Rebecca Saldana, withdrew from the primary, because otherwise there would have been four strong Democratic candidates for that office, and only two Republicans for the same office. She withdrew because she was afraid the top-two system would result in the two Republicans placing first and second, thus depriving any Democrat from being on the November ballot.

This article says the same thing happened to the Democratic Party in 2016, in the State Treasurer’s race; and it happened to the Republican Party in 2020 in the Lieutenant Governor’s race; and it happened to the Republican Party in the 2020 special election for Secretary of State. Thanks to Fairvote for the link.

Alabama Senator Merika Coleman (D-Birmingham) has introduced SB 318, to move the date for qualified parties to certify the names of their presidential nominees from 82 days before the election, to 74 days before. This would solve the problem that the existing deadline is earlier than this year’s Democratic national convention.

She has also introduced SB 324, which moves the certification deadline in the same way, and also moves the deadline for independent presidential candidate petitions to a later date. SB 324 has seven co-sponsors.