Mark Elias: 🚨BREAKING: Federal court rules that the Pennsylvania date requirement for mail-in ballot violates the First

[highplainsdem]

and 14th Amendments. Counties cannot reject ballots from counting undated and wrongly dated mail-in ballots.

A HUGE victory for my law firm, our clients DSCC and DCCC and the voters of PA!

https://www.democracydocket.com/cases/pennsylvania-undated-and-wrongly-dated-mail-in-ballots-challenge-eakin/


https://bsky.app/profile/marcelias.bsky.social/post/3llozc4udes2p


https://www.democracydocket.com/cases/pennsylvania-undated-and-wrongly-dated-mail-in-ballots-challenge-eakin/

Pennsylvania Undated and Wrongly Dated Mail-in Ballots Challenge (Eakin)
Eakin v. Adams County Board of Elections

Filed: November 7, 2022

Decided: March 31, 2025

Lawsuit filed by three Pennsylvania voters, Fetterman for PA (the U.S. Senate campaign for John Fetterman (D), the state’s current lieutenant governor), the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) against Pennsylvania’s 67 county boards of elections challenging the “Date Instruction,” for mail-in ballots. In Pennsylvania, there’s a slight distinction between absentee and mail-in ballots, but we will use “mail-in ballots” to refer to both types of ballots. The Date Instruction prevents counties from counting undated mail-in ballots (ballots that are timely cast and valid but missing a date on their outer return envelopes) and wrongly dated mail-in ballots (ballots that are timely cast and valid but have an incorrect date, such as the voter’s birthday, on their outer return envelopes).

-snip-

The plaintiffs also allege that not counting undated or wrongly dated mail-in ballots violates the First and 14th Amendments by placing an undue burden on the right to vote. The plaintiffs request that the court declare the Date Instruction and “any other provision that requires voters to provide (correct) dates on their mailing envelope—or precludes election officials from counting ballots that lack such dates” in violation of the Materiality Provision of the Civil Rights Act and First and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. The plaintiffs request that the defendants be prohibited from rejecting absentee and mail-in ballots that do not comply with the Date Instruction.

RESULT: On March 31, 2025 the court found that the state’s date requirement for mail-in ballot violates the First and 14th Amendments. Counties cannot reject ballots from counting undated and wrongly dated mail-in ballots.

[UTUSN]

1. knr

[MayReasonRule]

2. Elias And His Cohorts Are Fighting The Fight That ALL The Law Firms Ought To Be Fighting!

Great respect for Elias and company.

Huge respect!

[C_U_L8R]

5. Exactly !! This is how it's done.

Hey lawyers... take note. You too can be a hero.

[malaise]

3. K & R

for visibility

[peggysue2]

4. We should celebrate every win

And we should give kudos to the men and women working tirelessly to secure those wins. To Mike Elias and his team:

[Ping Tung]

6. Thanks for the all too rare good news. K&R

[lindysalsagal]

7. When this is over, and we still have voting rights, Marc Elias will be the hero.

I hope he has body guards.

[SheltieLover]

8. Kick

[bluestarone]

9. GEAT NEWS here. I'm gonna celebrate by

DONATING to Marc Elias.

[Quiet Em]

10. Marc Elias is heroic

He never stops fighting for and protecting our voting rights.

I'm so grateful for all he does.

[calimary]

11. He IS a hero! A hero not just for us, but for DEMOCRACY.

[wordstroken]

12. Fantastic news!! Thanks for posting, highplainsdem.

[AllaN01Bear]

13. ding ding ding ding.

[LoisB]

14. If I had living heroes, Marc Elias would top the list.

[pandr32]

15. Fantabulous!!!!!!!!

[FakeNoose]

16. This means it cannot be over-ruled by the PA state courts, am I right?

I've gotten sick and tired of all the bickering in Pennsylvania over this ridiculous issue. It has been ruled at least 3 times that I know of, probably more. The Repukes just won't let it go. But now they have to.

Pennsylvania Repukes can pound salt!

[TheRickles]

20. Or by SCOTUS because it's a state issue, I'm guessing (IANAL).

[BumRushDaShow]

22. The state Supreme Court agreed in January to review again

because their last ruling was because there was some kind of technical issue with the Commonwealth Court ruling and who was included (and who should have been included) in the case.

I summarized some of the stuff that has gone on the past year downthread - https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=20193904

[Alice B.]

17. Thank you, Marc Elias, from PA!

n/t

[ShazzieB]

18. GOOD!!!!!

That kind of dating requirement is complete bull pucky, invented purely to use as an excuse for rejecting ballots somebody feels like rejecting.

The date that matters is the date the ballot was received. It's ridiculous to reject a ballot just because a voter forgot to fill in a blank line, looked at the calendar wrong, or transposed some digits.

[MichMan]

27. Same with requiring a signature

Some people might just forget to sign it.

[aggiesal]

19. I believe that the ballots should be postmarked, just like our tax forms ...

I've seen postal workers waiting at the mailbox right up to midnight.
If you were in line by midnight they would accept the tax form. Lines were hours long.

I believe our ballots should be treated the same way.
In California, polls close at 8 pm.
If your not in line by 8pm. on election day, your ballot should not be accepted.

Am I wrong with this opinion?

[iluvtennis]

23. I've been in a line at CA post office to post a tax return. Line so long and unwieldy that the workers wouldn't know

what time you got in line. When I lived in San Jose, CA, the postal workers allowed you to drop the return in the bin well after midnight - they stayed there until each one us of was able to drive up and drop our return in the bin. They guaranteed a post mark before the midnight deadline.

[aggiesal]

29. They did the same thing here in San Diego, except ...

someone was monitoring the tail of the line and wouldn't let anyone arriving after midnight to get in line, otherwise they would stay there all night. They wanted to go home as well.
Now they have locks on the mailboxes after closing.

[iluvtennis]

30. San Diego more controls that San Jose - good stuff. n/t

[MichMan]

46. What validity does a postmark have it is added after a deadline ?

Are you saying even though you miss the deadline, they postmark it for the day before anyway?

[iluvtennis]

51. Yes, they postmarked it for the deadline. Wasn't our fault that the drop off line of cars went for a mile. Even though

we arrived well before midnight. Traffic congestion is an artifact of large metro areas - especially in California where our mass transportation options are few.

[MichMan]

55. "Line so long and unwieldy that the workers wouldn't know what time you got in line"

That means people getting in line well after the deadline would therefore still have their document postmarked fraudulently.

That was the basis for my statement.

[Polybius]

43. I don't think there's a right and wrong on this issue, as both sides think they're right

For the record, I agree with you.

[aggiesal]

50. I do think there is a right and wrong ...

I believe that when you sign it you should date it.
If you mail it, that postmark should be dated on or prior to the election date.

If your ballot has an incorrect or missing signing date and you drop it off at a voting precinct or at the ROV, on or prior to election day, it should still be counted regardless of the signing date statis, because the ballot is in the system before the election ended.

The ballot shouldn't be counted, if it was mailed and the ballot has a postmark after the election date, even if it has a signing date prior to the election date or it has no signing date at all.

[BumRushDaShow]

21. This is probably the millionth (exaggerated) case regarding our mail ballots and the dates

Last year, the 3rd Circuit overturned a lower court ruling for the same topic, although that case apparently used a different argument from the OP -

Civil rights groups appeal court ruling on 'undated' Pennsylvania ballots


Updated April 10, 2024 5:12 PM ET
Hansi Lo Wang


Civil rights groups, Pennsylvania's top election official and some local boards of elections are asking a federal appeals court to review a panel's ruling about mail-in ballots that could play a role in determining who wins this year's presidential election and other races in the key swing state.

Mailed ballots that arrive on time but in envelopes without dates handwritten by Pennsylvania voters or with incorrect dates should not be counted, a three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on March 27. Their 2-1 decision strikes down a lower court ruling.

But in a court filing released Wednesday, attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union — which is representing the Pennsylvania State Conference of the NAACP, the lead plaintiff — argue the decision should be revisited because the panel's interpretation of a landmark federal civil rights law "will needlessly disenfranchise thousands of Pennsylvania voters." "If adopted more broadly, it could deny the protection of federal law to literally millions," the attorneys added.

Pennsylvania's secretary of the commonwealth, Al Schmidt, as well as the local election boards for Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and some of the surrounding suburbs, filed a separate request for a rehearing that echoed similar concerns.

(snip)

That May of 2024, the 3rd Circuit refused to rehear that.

Meanwhile, the State Supreme Court (5 D) - 2 (R)) had ruled right before the 2024 election, that the date had to be there (apparently based on a technicality regarding the lower court's jurisdiction) -

Pennsylvania Supreme Court restores date requirement for mail ballots, voiding lower-court ruling


By Carter Walker | September 13, 2024, 4:32pm EDT


Pennsylvanians who vote by mail must write a proper date on their ballot envelopes for their votes to be counted, under a decision Friday from the state Supreme Court that could affect thousands of voters this November.

The decision voids an Aug. 30 Commonwealth Court ruling that enforcing the requirement on ballot dating violated voters’ rights under the state constitution. The Supreme Court’s 4–3 decision was based on whether the lower court had jurisdiction in the case, not on the merits of the underlying claim, meaning that the constitutional argument could be made again in court.

Republicans who appealed the lower court’s decision argued to the state Supreme Court last week that the petitioners failed to include all counties as parties to the case, among other claims. The original suit, brought by the ACLU of Pennsylvania and the Public Interest Law Center on behalf of a coalition of voting rights groups, targeted the Department of State, Allegheny County, and Philadelphia.

“The Commonwealth Court lacked subject matter jurisdiction to review the matter given the failure to name the county boards of elections of all 67 counties,” the Supreme Court wrote in its order Friday. The inclusion of Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt as a named party was not enough to give the Commonwealth Court jurisdiction in the case, the order said.

(snip)

The State Supreme Court will apparently revisit this AGAIN -

Pennsylvania high court to take up long-running dispute over mail-in ballots’ return envelope dates


By MARK SCOLFORO
Updated 4:05 PM EDT, January 17, 2025


HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The Pennsylvania Supreme Court said Friday it will again consider whether voters should have to write the accurate date on return envelopes used to send their completed mail-in ballots to be counted. The requirement in state law has generated more than a half-dozen court cases in the past four years, including several that reached the state Supreme Court.

The justices said they will decide whether the dating rule for absentee and mail ballot return envelopes violates a state constitutional provision that elections must be free and equal.

“The constitutional challenge in this appeal is based on the fact, established through years of litigation, that the dating requirements advance no ‘weighty interest’ and serve no purpose in the election process,” wrote Justice Christine Donohue, one of five Democrats on the seven-justice court.

Donohue, joined by one other Democrat, argued the court’s decision to take the case should have gone further and addressed “enforcement of the dating requirements before embarking on an analysis of its constitutionality.” The case involves 69 mail-in ballots from two state House special elections that a Philadelphia judge had said should be counted even though they lacked a handwritten date on the return envelope.

(snip)

After the 2024 election, the SCOTUS refused to hear the dangling appeal of the 3rd Circuit -

US Supreme Court turns away Pennsylvania mail-in ballot dispute

By Andrew Chung
January 21, 2025 9:49 AM EST Updated 2 months ago


Jan 21 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Tuesday to hear a bid by civil and voting rights groups to end Pennsylvania's mandate that mail-in ballots bear a handwritten date on the outer envelope, a requirement they contend is unnecessary and has resulted in needless disqualification of legitimate ballots. The justices turned away an appeal by the plaintiffs of a lower court's ruling that upheld the requirement and rejected the argument that it violated a provision in federal law that bars discarding ballots due to paperwork errors that are "not material" in determining whether a person is qualified to vote.

The Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2024 decided that the date requirement "serves little apparent purpose" as it is not used by officials to determine whether it was received on time. Nevertheless, it remains valid because the 1964 Civil Rights Act applies only to voter registration rules when a state is determining who is qualified to vote, not "how a qualified voter must cast his ballot for it to be counted," the 3rd Circuit ruled.

Pennsylvania often is pivotal in determining the outcome of presidential elections, as it again was last year. Republican President Donald Trump won the state over his Democratic rival Kamala Harris in November after losing it to Democrat Joe Biden four years earlier.

The requirement at issue affects voters in Pennsylvania who cast ballots by mail. It mandates that they place their secret ballot into an outer return envelope, on which they must sign and date a declaration that they are qualified to vote. Plaintiffs including the Pennsylvania State Conference of the NAACP, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, sued state and county election officials in 2022 under what is called the Civil Rights Act's materiality provision.

(snip)

And the beat goes on...

[FakeNoose]

24. Yes thanks for the review, the Repukes just wouldn't let it die

I think it's finally ... FINALLY! ... settled now.

Chump is also trying to kill the mailed ballots but it's not going to happen.

What's so completely stupid is that the Repukes would have actually benefitted in many states, by the mailed ballots. They embraced the issue until Chump ran for re-election in 2020.

[BumRushDaShow]

34. 45 recently started telling his minions to "vote early" and use those mail ballots

but it was too late because they were already conditioned to reject and fight them.

[Wiz Imp]

35. It actually may have made some difference in November's elections

Now way to quantify it though.

[BumRushDaShow]

47. There was an uptick of mail ballots in red areas in PA

most likely from GOP voters, but their "leadership" still "haven't got the memo" and continue to fight it (despite the fact that here in PA, the GOP almost unanimously (save for 1 of their members) passed Act-77 that authorized mail voting). Their focus is on disenfranchising Democrats.

[MayReasonRule]

48. HEAR, HEAR!!! Fraudulent Mail In Ballots Are About As Prevalent As Angels Dancing On Heads Of Pins

If there ARE those that are currently seeing angels dancing on heads of pins I have a question...

LSD, Mescaline, Psilocybin, or DMT?

Pretty much the same thing with " "fraudulent" " mail in ballots.

[gademocrat7]

25. K&R!

Well done Mark Elias and team!

[Eliot Rosewater]

26. Great work folks, unfortunately

it will be appealed to the nazis on the SC who will overturn it. OF COURSE

[Wiz Imp]

36. Nope. Case was 100% about PA state law. SCOTUS has no jurisdiction.

[MichMan]

40. Why was it in a Federal US District court?

They had jurisdiction

[Wiz Imp]

45. Sorry, I thought this was a state Supreme Court Decision

In January, they agreed to hear a separate case on the exact same issue. I thought that this was that case. The SCOTUS already declined to take up that case.

https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/pennsylvania-supreme-court-to-revisit-mail-in-ballot-date-dispute-scotus-declines-case/

Pennsylvania Supreme Court to Revisit Mail-In Ballot Date Dispute; SCOTUS Declines Case

[MichMan]

28. Doesn't that favor Republicans?

I imagine they are much more likely to not follow instructions than Democrats, who are more educated.

[cadoman]

31. I'm sure Elias has considered the demographic aspects of it

We likely have a situation where the postal services are regionally controlled by MAGATs and thus illiterate and unable to process the mail correctly.

[RandomNumbers]

32. It shouldn't matter.

Anyone can screw up something simple like a date for whatever reason, and that date field is just not material to ANYTHING about the ballot.

This is a scenario where we shouldn't give a sh*t who the ruling favors.

[benfranklin1776]

33. Precisely right! It serves NO valid purpose as courts have repeatedly recognized.

The timeliness of receipt of the ballot is verified by the state SURE system using bar coding on the ballot return envelopes, and you don’t get a ballot through the mail unless you are a validly registered voter and go through the process of requesting one from your bureau of elections. So these outer envelope dating requirements are, in my view, nothing but a poison pill deliberately designed and added by the R’s when they controlled the legislature at the time the vote by mail package of legislation first passed (only because we the people demanded it and our Democratic Governor Wolf strongly supported it) for the purpose of creating a hidden vote nullifying trap in order to give them the chance to toss valid ballots and disenfranchise people, which is the only thing they are experts at doing. 🤬 So a hearty Thank You Mark Elias for driving a hard legal stake into that vote suppressing vampire tactic 👏🏼👏🏼✊🏼

[BidenRocks]

41. This is not an issue for most here.

We get our ballots and within a week we drop it or mail it.
We are the exception.
As for dates and sigs, being retired, I forget the day.
They could contact the voter to verify, but only if they're gqp registered.
D ballots get shredded. Ohio, 2004. Kerry got hosed.

[benfranklin1776]

49. Yes I remember the 2004 election very painfully.

Exit polls had Kerry winning Ohio by as much as 5 percent then there was this massive and statistically improbable shift in the final count which, as I recall, was the subject of a book by statisticians as to how unlikely that was under normal circumstances. One thing that stuck out to me in that election also was the number of Ohio counties in which other D’s did very well but Kerry’s vote totals were out of line with those margins. Very troubling.Fast forward to the present, given today’s open boasts of the orange anus about not needing votes to win and word salad regurgitations about Pennsylvania tabulation machines I think our party needs to make election security a top priority as these bastards have zero morality and will stop at nothing to cling to power.

[brakester]

53. Changing voting rules

continuously is also a suppression tactic.

[Wiz Imp]

37. It favors Democracy

Republicans certainly don't think it favors them, or else they wouldn't have fought like hell against it for the past 5 years.

[FakeNoose]

39. The USPS will not aid Chump in suppressing the vote

There are been a few odd cases of RWNJ mail-truck drivers who have ditched sacks of ballots rather than deliver them. But to a great degree, the postal workers support the mailed ballots and they want to see the system operate safely and securely.

In Pittsburgh the receiving facility for mailed ballots is the same address as our main postal facility on California Avenue on the Northside. Once our ballots are mailed, they are immediately in the hands of the Allegheny County Board of Elections on the SAME DAY!

[Polybius]

44. There are also other groups in PA that vote Democratic that aren't majority college educated

Many of the poorer areas in Philly. Personally, I think it's pretty equal who it hurts more.

[Wiz Imp]

38. Would this ruling have made any difference in any past elections?

I'm assuming no, but I'm pretty sure it would have made the Casey-McCormick Senate race much closer (and it already was close).

[Polybius]

42. I know that the decision is popular, but saying it violates the 1st Amendment is a bit of a stretch

Do you think it holds up?

[Janbdwl72]

52. Thank you Mark Elias!

He and his attorneys do great work!

Now go back to fighting to confront the next voter suppressing challenge.

[Grins]

54. A needless requirement by Republicans who want to diminish the vote.

Date?

All that should matter is whether the ballot was delivered within the parameters of state law; X-days before Election Day, to y-days after Election Day.

Dating the envelope provides nothing except as a means of reducing voter participation; specifically, that of Democratic voters.