Federal Court Upholds Major Ruling In Swing-State Mail-In Ballot Case

The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday declined to reconsider a previous decision upholding a requirement that voters write dates on mail-in ballots in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.

A 3rd Circuit panel decided in late March that the state’s date requirement on mail-in ballots doesn’t violate the Civil Rights Act. The 3rd Circuit decided not to rehear the case en banc, maintaining that mail-in ballots must have the correct date on the outside envelopes in order to be counted.

“n the above-entitled case having been submitted to the judges who participated in the decision of this Court and to all the
other available circuit judges of the circuit in regular active service, and no judge who concurred in the decision having asked for rehearing, and a majority of the judges of the circuit in regular service not having voted for rehearing, the petitions for rehearing by the panel and the Court en banc, are denied,” the court wrote.

U.S. District Judge Susan Paradise Baxter ruled in November that mail-in ballots without a proper date should still be counted if received in time, arguing that rejecting them would violate the Civil Rights Act, according to CBS News. Baxter cited the more than 7,600 mail-in ballots across 12 counties that were tossed in the 2022 midterms for lacking or having incorrect dates.

Subsequently, the appeals court decided that the Civil Rights Act wasn’t applicable to ballot dates, but instead “is concerned only with the process of determining a voter’s eligibility to cast a ballot.”