Pennsylvania court rejects GOP push to stop fixing mail-in ballots with incorrect dates

A court in Pennsylvania ruled against the GOP on Monday when it decided that election officials can continue to notify voters whose mail-in ballots include errors, such as incorrect or missing dates, and help voters fix those problems before Election Day.

The Monroe County Republican Party asked a judge to block the county election board from sorting through mail ballots and helping voters resolve problems with their ballots. The county's efforts came after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered local officials to set aside mail ballots with date-related errors, rather than count them with correctly filled out ballots. 

The Monroe County GOP filed the request last week with help from Tom King, the general counsel for the Pennsylvania Republican Party. The party argued that actions by the county amounted to an illegal "pre-canvass" of mail ballots, which are supposed to be kept in secure locations before being counted Election Day starting at 7 a.m. 

King told Fox News Digital that officials are "scrounging through the ballots, looking to see if they can find ones that need to be fixed. And then they're calling voters to tell them to either come fix them or … vote provisionally at a polling place. None of this complies with Pennsylvania law."

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But the court disagreed and refused to issue the injunction Republicans were seeking. The Monroe County Court of Common Pleas said that where election law is unclear, it should be interpreted in a way that avoids disenfranchising people when possible.

"Given that our Supreme Court's policy has been to enfranchise the voter when interpreting ambiguous statutes and considering the Commonwealth Court's recent decision on this very subject, I find that MCRC has not shown a strong likelihood of success at this very early stage of litigation," wrote Monroe County Court of Common Pleas Judge Arthur L. Zulick.

The judge added that implementing an injunction the day before the election would cause more harm "than refusing it."

"I do not find that MCRC has a clear right to relief in view of the recent Commonwealth Court decision, and I find that at this point after 150 to 175 voters have been advised that their ballot has been canceled and that they have an opportunity to file a correct one, it would adversely affect the public interest to grant the injunction," the judge continued.

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King told Fox News Digital that despite this loss, Pennsylvania Republicans will consider using that argument "as a basis upon which to challenge votes if it's appropriate" after Election Day. He said the party might still "challenge those ballots that were improperly handled or counted."

Several counties in Pennsylvania are taking action similar to Monroe County in attempting to help voters cure ballots. Those include Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, and Philadelphia County.

Pennsylvania Acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman has encouraged all counties in Pennsylvania to take similar action after the state Supreme Court ordered election officials to "refrain from counting" mail ballots with missing or incorrect dates – one of the most consequential court decisions seen so far in Pennsylvania in the run-up to Election Day.

As a result of that decision, officials are being forced to set aside thousands of ballots as litigation continues on the issue, unless they can contact voters and help cure their ballots.

The state NAACP and other groups – represented by the ACLU – filed a lawsuit in federal court aiming to allow these uncured votes to be counted. It alleged that disqualifying votes based on "minor errors" like incorrect or missing dates runs afoul of federal law.

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"This refusal to count timely mail ballots submitted by otherwise eligible voters because of a trivial paperwork error violates the Materiality Provision of the Civil Rights Act, which makes it unlawful to deny the right to vote based on an ‘error or omission’ on a voting-related ‘record or paper’ that is ‘not material in determining whether [a voter] is qualified under State law to vote in [the] election," the lawsuit says.

It remains to be seen whether the thousands of votes that will likely be affected by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling could make a difference in the state's high-profile U.S. Senate race. If the margin is extremely close, the state could be in for weeks of litigation to decide how to handle the ballots.