GOP asks Pa. Supreme Court to reject mail-in ballots with handwritten date errors

The Republican Party is calling on the state Supreme Court to discount mail-in ballots that arrive on time but lack written dates.

On Tuesday, the Republican National Committee and Republican Party of Pennsylvania filed a petition asking the court to reverse a decision last month by the state’s Commonwealth Court.

The petition comes amid contention over the race for one of Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate seats. The Associated Press has declared Republican businessman Dave McCormick the winner over Democratic incumbent Sen. Bob Casey. Casey has refused to concede, and officials still are tallying ballots.

As of Tuesday evening, McCormick led by about 30,000 votes. McCormick is up 48.9% to Casey’s 48.5%.

Casey wants the estimated remaining 100,000 ballots to be counted before the race is called.

Provisional, overseas, military and contested mail-in ballots are being counted this week.

The petition concerns an appellate case allowing mail-in ballots in a Philadelphia special election to be counted if they arrived on time but either lacked written dates or had incorrect dates on their outer envelopes.

Republicans argue the Commonwealth Court decision in a case that challenged statewide date requirements was problematic because it dealt only with Philadelphia and did not involve all 67 counties in Pennsylvania.

While the Commonwealth Court was not asked to address date errors in this month’s general election, the majority opinion didn’t expressly state it would not apply.

Republicans also claim the appellate court decision was rushed and the state Supreme Court should weigh in.

The petition argues the appellate ruling allowing for contested mail-in ballots to be counted “all but deleted the General Assembly’s date requirement from the Election Code, has done so without jurisdiction and has contravened this Court’s precedents in the process.”

Republicans are asking the Supreme Court to reverse the appellate court decision.

It’s unclear how many mail-in ballots that lack written dates there are from this month’s general election that are contested in the state.

In 2022, there were more than 10,000 such ballots, according to a lawsuit filed in May by the Pittsburgh-based Black Political Empowerment Project group.

The group argued the handwritten date requirement is “meaningless” since counties don’t rely on it to check a ballot’s validity and instead timestamp ballots when they reach the election office.

Data shows the thrown-out ballots in previous elections have disproportionately come from Democratic and elderly voters, who have a higher propensity to vote by mail.

Voter turnout in this year’s election was about 30% higher than 2022.

This isn’t the first time mail-in ballots that lack handwritten signatures have weighed on a Senate race.

In the 2022 Republican primary, when McCormick was challenging television personality Mehmet Oz, McCormick filed a suit asking for such contested ballots to be counted.

McCormick won that suit, the contested ballots were counted, but Oz still won. Oz eventually went on to lose to U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Braddock.

Casey campaign spokeswoman Maddy McDaniel criticized the Republicans’ lawsuit and said it is another attempt to disenfranchise voters in the Senate race.

The McCormick campaign filed a lawsuit last week asking to “sequester” some provisional ballots in Philadelphia in hopes the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on their validity.

“Pennsylvanians deserve to have their voices heard, but McCormick and his allies continue to try to disenfranchise Pennsylvania voters with litigation. With tens of thousands of votes left to count, this democratic process must be allowed to play out.”

The Pennsylvania Republican Party and the McCormick campaign did not respond to requests for comment.