HARRISBURG, Pa. — A Republican-controlled county in Pennsylvania violated state law when election workers refused to tell voters that their mail-in ballot had been rejected and wouldn't be counted in last April's primary election, a judge ruled.
As a result, voters in Washington County were unable to exercise their legal right either to challenge the decision of the county elections board or to cast a provisional ballot in place of the rejected mail-in ballot, the judge said.
The decision is one of several election-related lawsuits being fought in Pennsylvania's courts, a hotly contested presidential battleground where November's contest between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris could be razor close.
“It’s a great day for voters in Washington County,” David Gatling Sr., president of the NAACP branch in Washington, Pennsylvania, said in a statement Monday.
The NAACP branch sued the county earlier this summer as did seven voters whose ballots had been rejected in the April 23 primary and the Center for Coalfield Justice, accusing Washington County of violating the constitutional due process rights of voters by deliberately concealing whether their ballot had been counted.
In his decision Friday, Judge Brandon Neuman ordered Washington County to notify any voter whose mail-in ballot is rejected because of an error — such as a missing signature or missing handwritten date — so that the voter has an opportunity to challenge the decision.
Neuman, elected as a Democrat, also ordered the county to allow those voters to vote by provisional ballot to help ensure they could cast a ballot that would be counted.
In the primary, the county rejected 259 mail-in ballots that had been received before polls closed, or 2% of all mail-in ballots received on time, the judge wrote. Roughly three-fourths of mail-in ballots tend to be cast by Democrats in Pennsylvania, possibly the result of Trump baselessly claiming for years that mail-in voting is rife with fraud.
Nick Sherman, the chairman of Washington County's commissioners, said he and other county officials hadn't decided whether to appeal. However, Sherman said he believed the county's practices are compliant with state law.
Sherman noted that Neuman is a Democrat, and called it a prime example of a judge “legislating from the bench.”
“I would question how you would read a law that is that black and white and then make a ruling like that,” Sherman said in an interview.
Sherman said state law does not allow the county to begin processing mail-in ballots — called precanvassing — until Election Day starting at 7 a.m.
However, Witold Walczak, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, which helped represent the plaintiffs, said county election workers can see right away whether a just-arrived mail-in ballot has mistakes that disqualify it.
Most counties check for such mistakes and notify voters immediately or enter the ballot's status into the state's voting database, Walczak said. That helps alert a voter that their ballot was rejected so they can try to make sure they cast a ballot that counts, Walczak said.
None of that is precanvassing, Walczak said.
“Precanvassing is about opening the (ballot) envelopes,” Walczak said. “That’s not what this is. And if Sherman is right, then 80% of counties are doing it wrong.”
