Pennsylvania counties must segregate and not count mail ballots with missing or incorrect dates, the state Supreme Court said Tuesday, in a ruling that could affect thousands of votes in November’s midterm elections.
“The Pennsylvania county boards of elections are hereby ordered to refrain from counting any absentee and mail-in ballots received for the November 8, 2022 general election that are contained in undated or incorrectly dated outer envelopes,” the court said in its order Tuesday afternoon.
The justices said they were deadlocked, 3-3, on whether rejecting undated and wrongly dated mail ballots violates federal civil rights law. They did not immediately issue any opinions that would explain the order and said they would come later. It was not immediately clear whether the court intended to have the ballots rejected altogether, since it ordered counties to set them aside and “refrain” from counting them.
“We hereby direct that the Pennsylvania county boards of elections segregate and preserve any ballots contained in undated or incorrectly dated outer envelopes,” the court said in the brief order.