A district judge has ruled that election officials in Washington County must provide absentee voters with a notice if their vote is not counted due to a clerical error and provide them with the opportunity to cast a provisional ballot on Election Day.
Washington County Judge Brandon P. Neuman granted a temporary restraining order sought by voting rights groups to block the practice of not informing voters when their ballot was rejected due to an error by the county’s election board shortly before the April primary.
The groups argued that the policy disempowered voters by effectively hiding the fact that their votes would not be counted and denying them the opportunity to cast provisional ballots.
“It should be a given that voters will be notified if they make a mistake when voting by mail and have the opportunity to cast a provisional ballot. This decision helps ensure that every voter knows their rights and has the opportunity to correct any mistakes,” said Sarah Martik, executive director of the Center for Coalfield Justice, a plaintiff in the case.
Nick Sherman, chairman of the Washington County Board of Commissioners, said in a statement that Neuman’s decision was “the most egregious case of rulemaking from the bench” that Sherman had ever seen, adding that state law prohibits the processing or counting of absentee ballots before 7 a.m. on Election Day.
“This is a page out of the Democratic Party’s handbook. When they disagree with a state law, they use the ACLU as a weapon and find a liberal judge to rule in their favor. This is unconstitutional and un-American,” Sherman, a Republican, said in the statement. He said county officials are considering their next steps.
Whether mail-in ballots containing errors in the declaration that voters must fill out on the outside of the return envelope should be counted has been a perennial issue in Pennsylvania elections since the state first allowed mail-in voting without giving a reason in 2020.
In a series of challenges and rulings in state and federal courts, lawyers have found that the law, known as Law 77 is clear that voters must sign and date their ballots. A federal district judge found last year that the date requirement violates the Civil Rights Act’s prohibition on denying someone a vote because of minor errors in paperwork.
The Third US Court of Appeals overturned this decisionaccording to which the provision only applies if the State determines WHO are allowed to vote, and not to be bound by rules that regulate How In order for the vote to be counted, it must be cast.
The ACLU filed a Appeal before the Commonwealth Court in Pennsylvania on the grounds that the date specification violates the state constitution.
In his 28-page opinion issued Friday, Neuman noted that the Pennsylvania State Legislature had added to the state’s election law the ability for voters to challenge a Board of Elections decision determining whether mail-in votes can be counted.
“The policy adopted by the Washington County Board of Elections clearly provided that no voter whose mail-in ballot contained an error would be notified that his or her ballot would not be counted,” Neuman wrote. “The voter has the legal right to challenge the Board of Elections’ decision. That challenge may not be successful, but the voter still has the right to be heard by a fair and impartial tribunal.”
Neuman’s order directs the Board of Elections to notify voters whose mail-in ballots were set aside because of disqualification errors so that they have an opportunity to challenge the Board of Elections’ decision. The order also directs the county to accurately record the status of mail-in ballots returned to the county in the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors (SURE) and to inform the voter of the status upon request.
Election law allows voters who request an absentee ballot but are listed as not voting in their polling place’s register to cast a provisional ballot, Neuman’s ruling said. Although the legislature and the law do not define the term “voted,” Neuman said that based on the information presented to the court, he determined that a person whose absentee ballot was canceled did not vote.
“The Washington County Board of Elections shall designate one person in each precinct whose absentee ballots shall be segregated as a non-voter so that that person may cast a provisional ballot at the polling place,” Neuman wrote.
The ruling follows a complaint filed in July by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania on behalf of seven voters and local interest groups, the Center for Coalfield Justice and the Washington Branch of the NAACP.
The lawsuit alleged that the county’s policies disenfranchised 249 voters. Their mail-in ballots were rejected because of errors on the ballot’s outer “declaration envelope,” such as an “incomplete date” or the envelope not being signed and dated in the correct place.
Had county officials properly entered the rejected mail-in ballots into the state’s SURE ballot-tracking database, the lawsuit alleges, voters would have been notified that their ballots had been rejected and would have been able to vote using provisional ballots.
