Federal Appeals Court Upholds Voting Rights Victory in Pennsylvania Mail-In Ballot Case
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed a lower court ruling that Pennsylvania's date requirement for mail-in ballots violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The decision in Eakin v. Adams County Board of Elections ensures that counties cannot reject mail-in ballots solely because return envelopes are undated or incorrectly dated.
Elias Law Group represented plaintiff Bette Eakin alongside the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), and AFT Pennsylvania in this landmark voting rights case.
The three-judge panel ruled unanimously that Pennsylvania's date requirement imposed an unconstitutional burden on voters' rights. The court found that the requirement served no legitimate purpose in election administration, ballot security, or fraud prevention, yet resulted in thousands of legitimate ballots being discarded in recent elections.
"This ruling is a decisive victory for voting rights and democratic participation in Pennsylvania," said Uzoma Nkwonta, Partner at Elias Law Group. "The court recognized what we've long argued: that discarding otherwise valid ballots over trivial errors that have nothing to do with the voter’s eligibility is a violation of voters’ fundamental constitutional rights. We're proud to have worked alongside the DSCC and DCCC in this critical fight to protect every Pennsylvanian's right to have their vote counted."
The lawsuit, which was originally filed in 2022, challenged Pennsylvania's practice of rejecting mail-in ballots when voters failed to handwrite a date on their return envelope or wrote an incorrect date, even when the ballots were received on time and cast by eligible voters. The date requirement has resulted in the rejection of thousands of ballots in recent elections, including over 10,000 ballots in the 2022 General Election and approximately 4,500 ballots in the 2024 General Election. Under today's ruling, Pennsylvania counties must now count otherwise valid mail-in ballots regardless of whether the outer envelope contains a handwritten date or includes date errors.
“The ballot is a building block of our democracy. Perhaps no civic act has greater importance—or consequences—than a citizen’s casting of a ballot,” the three-judge panel wrote in their 55-page opinion.
“The date requirement does not play a role in election administration, nor does it contribute an added measure of solemnity beyond that created by a signature. And only in the exceedingly rare circumstance does it contribute to the prosecution of voter fraud. Weighing these interests against the burden on voters, we are unable to justify the Commonwealth’s practice of discarding ballots contained in return envelopes with missing or incorrect dates that has resulted in the disqualification of thousands of presumably proper ballots,” the panel concluded.
Click HERE to read the full opinion.
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