PHILADELPHIA — The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has rejected a request that it reconsider its definition of what’s considered an “incorrectly dated” mail ballot.
That means the definition the court ordered Saturday stands: Mail-in ballots are to be rejected in this election if the handwritten dates fall before Sept. 19, 2022, or after Nov. 8 (Election Day), and absentee ballots are to be rejected if they are dated before Aug. 30, 2022, or after Nov. 8.
Blair County’s elections board had asked the court to tailor its definition to each individual ballot, rather than have a blanket range of acceptable dates. Otherwise, the county said, the court’s current definition allows ballots to be counted even if the written dates are before the ballots were ever sent to voters or after they were returned.
State law requires voters to write a date on the outer envelope when voting by mail, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled last week that undated and wrongly dated mail ballots must be set aside and not counted. But it didn’t immediately define what counts as a correct or incorrect date, leaving counties scrambling to figure out what to do. The court’s second order Saturday set the specific date ranges that counties are to accept or reject.
Blair County’s elections board pushed back in a filing Sunday.
”With all due respect to this Honorable Court, the Supplemental Order actually raises more questions than it answered and makes it confusing to the various Boards of Elections,” the county board of elections wrote.
The county requested the justices change their order so ballots are only accepted based on when each individual ballot was mailed out and received. Alternatively, they asked the court to clarify — and explicitly say — that ballots can be counted at any time within the order’s date range, even if it’s before the ballot was given to the voter or after it was actually received by the county.
In an order Monday afternoon, the state Supreme Court rejected the county’s request.
