The Department of State says more than 16,000 mail-in ballots were disqualified by county officials because they lacked secrecy envelopes or proper signatures or dates.
HARRISBURG, Pa. — New data from Pennsylvania’s elections agency shows an early November state court decision that barred mail-in ballots without accurate handwritten dates on their exterior envelopes resulted in otherwise valid votes being thrown out.
The remaining 7,904 invalidated ballots were tossed out because the exterior envelopes used to send in those ballots did not have the voters’ signatures, or because those exterior envelopes were either undated or improperly dated. “In many counties, voters who provide their email address when applying for a mail ballot automatically receive email notifications with status updates on their ballot, including whether their ballot was canceled,” Department of State spokesperson Ellen Lyon said in an email. “There is no similar automatic notification system for voters who do not provide an email address when applying for a mail ballot.
Negotiations between Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf and Republican legislative leaders about ending the exterior envelope date requirement failed because the sides could not reach agreement on a wider bill to address a host of election procedures and policy changes. The exterior envelope dates are not needed to ensure ballots arrive in time — that occurs when they are received and clocked in by county elections workers.
Other federal litigation against the secretary of state and county elections boards over the inaccurate or missing envelope dates remains pending. It claims enforcing the date requirement has a larger impact on voters who are “significantly older than both other Pennsylvanians who voted by mail and all registered Pennsylvania voters.”
“It’s still 16,000 people whose votes didn’t count,” Schneider said. “It would be good to avoid that, right?”
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