A lawsuit challenging a Lancaster County law on mail-in ballot protocol was filed Friday against the Lancaster County Board of Elections.
The plaintiffs are challenging the rejection of mail-in and absentee ballots that omit the last two digits of the year. Lancaster County ballots display the first two numbers of the year as 20 and require voters to fill out the last two.
The suit was filed in the Lancaster Court of Common Pleas by the Pennsylvania Alliance for Retired Americans, which is represented by Fair Elections Center and LeVan Stapleton Segal Cochran LLC.
The filers argue that since the current year is displayed on the ballots themselves and that there is little ambiguity as to what year an election is taking place in, the writing of the year is redundant.
"These ballots are not from the past," said Jon Sherman, the litigation director at the Fair Elections Center. "They're not from the future. They're not from 2023. They're not from 2025. We know what year these ballots were issued. We know what year they were cast in. It's reading Pennsylvania law into absurdity to require this as a mandatory requirement when they filled out the month and day."
In the leadup to the April primaries, Pennsylvania Deputy Secretary for Elections Jonathan Marks had sent an email to counties advising them to count the ballots that do not have the full year written. Lancaster County was among the counties that did not count them.
The plaintiffs intend to file a motion for a preliminary injunction.