Federal Court Orders Pennsylvania To Count Mail-in Ballots With Missing or Incorrect Date

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, in a major victory for Pennsylvania voters, a federal court ruled that Pennsylvania counties must count mail-in ballots that are missing or have an incorrect date on the outer envelope.

This decision stems from a lawsuit by civil rights organizations challenging the state’s date requirement for mail-in ballots, which mandated counties to reject undated mail-in ballots (ballots that are timely cast and valid but missing a date on their outer return envelopes) or wrongly dated mail-in ballots (ballots that are timely cast and valid but missing a date on their outer return envelopes).

Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, the plaintiffs alleged that rejecting ballots with a missing or incorrect date violates the Materiality Provision of the Civil Rights Act — which prevents disenfranchising a voter for a reason that is not material to their eligibility such as a small error or omission — because the date is not consequential in determining if a voter’s ballot was timely cast. Instead, Pennsylvania uses the time the ballot was received and stamped by the county board to determine when the ballot was received.

The court sided with the plaintiffs today and struck down this requirement after finding that it does violate the Materiality Provision “Federal law prohibits a state from erecting immaterial roadblocks, such as this, to voting,” the court held.