Another election, another Democrat suing to bypass the rules for mail-in ballots, and of course, in a major swing state.
The campaign of Pennsylvania Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is facing off against Trump-backed Dr. Mehmet Oz for a U.S. Senate seat being vacated by GOP Sen. Pat Toomey, has filed suit against in federal court the state to force election officials into counting mail-in ballots that are missing key, required information like a date.
“Plaintiffs have asked a federal judge to order all mail ballots to be counted regardless of the date voters pen on the envelope. The lawsuit comes a week after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that officials should set aside and not count mail ballots with an incorrect or empty date,” The Daily Wire reported.
The complaint says: ”The date [requirement] imposes unnecessary hurdles that eligible Pennsylvanians must clear to exercise their most fundamental right, resulting in otherwise valid votes being arbitrarily rejected without any reciprocal benefit to the Commonwealth.”
Fetterman’s campaign argued further that the date requirement has no real relevance in determining if individuals are otherwise qualified to vote under state law as long as the ballots are cast by the date of the election and meet other voter requirements.
The lawsuit alleges that election officials are rejecting “qualified voters who accidentally failed to write the date on their ballot envelope, and more still will be rejected when voters enter an incorrect date, such as their birthdate, instead of the date they completed or signed their ballot.”
The outlet continued:
According to three separate polls from the Trafalgar Group, Big Data Poll, and InsiderAdvantage/FOX 29, Philadelphia voters have Oz up by two points in a race where every vote counts to determine the winner.
But without the support from state law to count mail ballots marked an incorrect or blank date, Democrats could likely lose tens of thousands of votes that would be thrown out.
Although it’s unclear how many ballots will be affected by the Supreme Court ruling, Democrats disproportionately use mail ballots over Republicans.
The suit further argues that Democrats say tossing out ballots without dates or with an incorrect date is a violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which says “a state cannot utilize election practices that unduly burden the right to vote.”
Meanwhile, voting rights groups filed a separate lawsuit at a federal court in Pittsburgh after the state Supreme Court’s ruling, arguing that county elections officials should not be able to discount undated ballots under the Materiality Provision of the Civil Rights Act, which has been used successfully in similar cases.
Thus far, federal courts have not set dates for hearings.
