PHILADELPHIA — The Pennsylvania Department of State asked counties Saturday for a partisan breakdown of the undated and wrongly dated mail ballots they’ve received, alarming some local officials who saw the request as inappropriate.
County officials said there’s no reason for the department to need party information on ballot rejections. The department defended its request as “perfectly appropriate” because it has no other way to collect the data and is preparing for possible litigation.
“We have no systematic way of capturing that information, so that’s why we sent the survey to all 67 counties to ask how many undated and how many incorrectly dated ballots do you have, and also broken by party,” Leigh M. Chapman, the acting secretary of state, told reporters Monday. “We know we’ll be asked this question if there’s litigation, so it’s our way to be proactive and ask these counties this information.”
