Democracy depends on rules. It only exists because people accept rules that govern their behavior as well as follow rules laid out to make the democratic process free and fair.
This is not rocket science, nor should it be controversial. But Pennsylvania Democrats want to accept ballots that are undated. “The date [requirement] imposes unnecessary hurdles that eligible Pennsylvanians must clear to exercise their most fundamental right, resulting in otherwise valid votes being arbitrarily rejected without any reciprocal benefit to the Commonwealth,” their lawsuit reads, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
It’s an “unnecessary hurdle” to know the date? Or perhaps the suit refers to it being an “unnecessary hurdle” to write it down?
This is beyond silly. It’s criminal. Anyone who’s that unaware of what date it is is also incapable of rationally making a choice on who to vote for. The ballot should be tossed and a wellness check performed at the residence of the voter.
This is not an insignificant issue. According to the Inquirer story, there are likely to be “tens of thousands of undated and wrongly dated ballots rejected statewide under a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling.”
State law requires that voters handwrite a date on the outer envelope when returning their mail ballots, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled last week that undated and wrongly dated mail ballots be set aside and not counted. The court issued a follow-up order Saturday setting specific date ranges that the handwritten dates must fall within.
There will likely be tens of thousands of undated and wrongly dated ballots rejected statewide under that ruling. Because mail ballots are so disproportionately used by Democrats over Republicans, that will likely mean thousands, if not tens of thousands, of net votes for Fetterman that are rejected.
Fetterman’s lawsuit is one of about 100 election-related lawsuits already filed across the country.
They include both Democratic-led efforts to expand voting rules and GOP-led lawsuits seeking to block votes or voting procedures in light of fears about purported election security issues or fraud. Mail-in ballots have become more contentious in light of the 2020 election, in which former President Donald Trump and his allies linked the absentee ballots to being more susceptible to voter fraud despite a lack of evidence and repeatedly challenged them in court. (Nearly all their lawsuits failed, except for one in Pennsylvania that only affected a small number of ballots.) Republican lawmakers have also spent the ensuing two years conducting audits and reviews of the 2020 election—which have failed to find any evidence of fraud—and tightening state voting rules in a purported effort to curb voter fraud, despite there being no evidence such widespread fraud exists.
Suits to “expand voting rules” are blatant efforts to circumvent the legislature and short-circuit the democratic process. Democrats, unable to change the law legally, are seeking to alter the rules through judicial fiat.
This “undermines democracy” far more than any Republican efforts to “limit” voting for security reasons.
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