Pennsylvania must stop throwing out mail ballots over date errors, court rules
Source: CBS News/AP
August 26, 2025 / 2:59 PM EDT / AP
A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled that it is unconstitutional for the presidential battleground state of Pennsylvania to throw out mail-in ballots simply because the voter didn't write an accurate date on the return envelope. The unanimous decision by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Pennsylvania to stop throwing out such ballots and upheld the decision earlier this year by a federal judge in Pittsburgh.
In its 55-page opinion, the three-judge panel said it had to weigh the state's interest in throwing out the ballots against the constitutional right to vote. The panel wrote that it was "unable to justify" the practice of discarding such ballots "that has resulted in the disqualification of thousands of presumably proper ballots."
Under Pennsylvania law, voters are required to write the date on the return envelope for their mail ballot. However, thousands of voters, confused by the request to write the date, might skip it or write another date, such as their birth date. Tuesday's decision marks the latest instance in more than a half-dozen cases where a court has instructed election officials in Pennsylvania to count such ballots.
However, higher courts have always reinstated the requirement in the heavily litigated matter that has pitted Democrats and their allies in trying to get rid of the requirement against Republicans who defend it. For Tuesday's ruling to be reversed, the U.S. Supreme Court would need to take up the issue.
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/court-orders-pennsylvania-stop-throwing-out-mail-ballots-handwritten-date/
Link to RULING (PDF viewer) - https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26074783-eakinca3082625/#document/p55
Link to RULING (PDF) - https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/26074783/eakinca3082625.pdf
Just heard this on the local news radio station here in Philly about 20 minutes ago.
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both in state AND federal court. The feds generally wave it away Because. State. Issue. But the GOP keeps going there anyway because the state Supreme court is majority (D). The state Supreme Court keeps punting when they end up having to decide, and it seems to always happen just ahead of an election so they leave it "as is".
During that time as it was being adjudicated and was in effect, Democrats HAVE been doing massive education campaigns and ads and redesigning and redesigning again, the envelopes (to the point of actually pre-filling out the YEAR boxes). But because our urban areas ARE diverse, with many nationalities and languages, there is still confusion. Here was Philly's last year -
You have procrastinators who often hurry their way through the ballot and shove the completed ballot directly into the "outer envelope" (forgetting to put it in the "secrecy envelope" first (making that ballot a "naked ballot" )) and then forgetting to sign/date that outer envelope, just to get it in the mail or at a drop box in time.
The whole issue of mailed ballots became politicized in 2020 when we had the Covid lockdown. Chump suddenly discovered that most of the voters who wanted to use the mailed ballots were Democratic voters.
Once he realized that, it suddenly became EVIL and FRAUDULENT to vote by mail. He insisted that the R's all had to come to the polls and vote in person (this was before we had the Covid vaccines), and very few R voters used the mailed ballot that year.
If Chump had just kept his mouth shut in 2020 about the mailed ballots, he probably would have won the election because many of the R voters - especially the older ones - wanted to vote by mail. What's been happening ever since then has been fallout from that huge blunder.
