TPM: 

…After Trump won, [Emil[ Bove became the president’s personal enforcer in the DOJ….Bove is [now] serving in the rarified role of a federal judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals….

On Friday, he went out of his way in that role to issue a 20-page order in an elections case that the court decided nearly two weeks ago. On Oct. 14, the Third Circuit denied a full-court rehearing that the RNC had requested over an August ruling. In that case, the panel upheld a lower court decision requiring Pennsylvania to count undated or incorrectly dated mail-in ballots, ruling that earlier directives to toss ballots that contained those errors violated the Constitution. These ballots are often hotly contested in Pennsylvania elections, with Republicans seeking to limit the criteria for which mail-in votes are accepted and Democrats trying to expand it.

The appeals court said when it issued its opinion that Bove would file his own dissent at a later date. On Friday, it came. It offers a look at the start of Bove’s newfound career as an appellate judge….

[Josh Gerstein of POLITICO on the dissent:  “Judge Emil Bove’s dissent to 3rd Cir denying en banc in case striking PA mail-in ballot dating rule. Bove mocks impact: ‘For a voter with a functioning pen, sufficient ink & average hand dexterity, this should take less than five seconds.’ “

Full dissent here.]

ABC News:

HARRISBURG, Pa. — A technical requirement that Pennsylvania voters write accurate dates on the exterior envelope of mail-in ballots was again the subject of a court proceeding on Thursday as advocates argued the mandate unfairly leads to otherwise valid votes being thrown out.

A five-judge Commonwealth Court panel heard about two hours of argument in a case that was filed in May, even though the date requirement has been upheld both by the state Supreme Court and the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The case was brought by the Black Political Empowerment Project, Common Cause and allied advocacy groups against the secretary of state and the elections boards in Philadelphia and Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh. They argued that enforcing the date requirement infringes upon voting rights and that none of the prior cases on the topic directly ruled whether it runs afoul of the state constitution’s Free and Equal Elections Clause.