BREAKING: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court Has Overturned A Widespread Mail-In Voting Law

The no-excuse mail-in ballot measures in force in Pennsylvania for the 2020 election have now been invalidated by the state’s Supreme Court, however the results of the 2020 elections will not be changed. According to MSN, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court determined that such a mail-in voting rule would need a constitutional change before it could be enacted. If submitted to the people, a constitutional change repealing the Article VII, Section 1 requirement of in-person voting is likely to be adopted.” However, before legislation allowing no-excuse mail-in voting can be “placed on our statute books,” a constitutional amendment must be proposed and adopted by the people.

The verdict was issued by a majority Democrat court of five Democrats and two Republicans, and it might be appealed to a higher court. Pennsylvania expanded postal voting in 2019 with a legislation praised as a bipartisan compromise after it was passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature and signed by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf. It was later chastised by Republicans when then-President Donald Trump falsely claimed postal voting of being a source of massive fraud. In August 2021, 14 Republican members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives filed a lawsuit alleging that the state’s postal voting statute was unconstitutional.

Mail voting increased in popularity in 2020, when congregating at polling places posed a health concern owing to the epidemic; according to NBC News, more than 2.6 million Pennsylvania voters cast a mail or early in-person ballot. The judgment came a day after the court agreed to hear an appeal by Lehigh County Judge candidate Zachary Cohen in a case in which he asserted that undated mail-in votes might influence the outcome of an upcoming county judge contest, according to McCall.

The court’s decision upheld a previous decision to disregard 257 undated mail-in ballots. The Court reversed a prior decision by Lehigh County Judge Edward Reibman, who decided the undated ballots should be counted because rejecting them would violate a Supreme Court order on uncounted ballots in 2020. Cohen’s lawyer, Adam Bonin, argued that the case should be considered by the Supreme Court, which ruled 4-3 to count undated mail-in ballots but did not decide on whether undated ballots should be included in future elections. In the race for one of Lehigh County’s three Common Pleas Court seats, Cohen is trailing Republican David Ritter by 74 votes. The outcome may be influenced by the 257 unmarked ballots in question.