Standards for counting mail ballots in hotly contested swing state illegal, RNC charges

Pennsylvania may be the most hotly contested state in the Nov. 5 presidential election. And four years ago, it was the most controversial state for its lack of mail-in ballot standards.

In the closing weeks of the 2024 election, Republicans have sued the office of Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt for what they say are inconsistent standards for allowing voters to correct—or “cure”—ballots.

The Republican National Committee and the Pennsylvania Republican Party both sued Schmidt as the state’s top election official.

Earlier this year, Schmidt announced that voters who don’t follow instructions for completing and returning mail-in ballots may cast provisional ballots.

However, the GOP plaintiffs note, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held in 2020 that voters who choose to vote by mail don’t have the legal right to cure defects in those ballots.

“Secretary Schmidt’s policy ignores the law and has caused great confusion to Pennsylvania voters,” Michael Whatley, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said in a public statement last week.

The Republican National Committee has filed 120 lawsuits in 26 states for the 2024 election cycle.

“This clearly undermines election integrity, diminishes fairness for voters, and threatens to erode public confidence in our elections,” Whatley added. “We have filed suit to force election officials to follow the law in the Keystone State.”

Under Schmidt’s directive, county election officials may adopt what the RNC calls “a patchwork of unlawful curing policies.” In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs note that the Pennsylvania Constitution says: “All laws regulating the holding of elections by the citizens, or for the registration of electors, shall be uniform throughout the state.”

Pennsylvania often uses the word “electors” to refer to voters.

Schmidt’s office did not respond to inquiries from The Daily Signal for this report.

The Pennsylvania Department of State issued “Guidance Concerning Civilian Absentee and Mail-in Ballot Procedures” on Sept. 10.

“If the voter is listed in the poll book as requesting a mail-in or absentee ballot but cannot surrender their balloting materials, or if the voter is listed in the poll book as having returned a mail-in or absentee ballot, then the voter may only cast a provisional ballot,” the guidance says.

Pennsylvania had the fourth-closest state outcome in the 2020 presidential election, with about 80,000 votes boosting Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump.

As described in my book “The Myth of Voter Suppression,” the controversy in 2020 dealt largely with postmarks and the deadline for absentee ballots.

Under then-Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, and the state Supreme Court, with its elected Democrat majority, the law covering mail-in ballots was changed to count ballots that arrived three days after the statutory deadline close of Election Day. Ballots also no longer had to be postmarked before Election Day.

The changes came despite objections from the Republican-controlled state Legislature.

A new cast is running elections in 2024, however.

Schmidt is a Republican, but was appointed to the office by Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, in January 2023.

That same month, President Joe Biden presented Schmidt with a Presidential Citizens Medal at a White House ceremony marking the two-year anniversary of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

Biden said he did so because Schmidt, as a Republican election official in Philadelphia, resisted efforts by the Trump campaign to challenge the outcome of the 2020 election.

Schmidt had a record of tackling voter fraud when he was a member of the Philadelphia City Commission, which supervises elections in the city. In that job, Schmidt made a referral to the U.S. Justice Department, which eventually led to the convictions of Michael “Ozzy” Myers, a former Democratic member of the U.S. House, and Domenick J. Demuro, a Philadelphia election judge, in what prosecutors called an election fraud and bribery scheme. In 2017, while he was an election commissioner, Schmidt reported to the Pennsylvania Department of State that at least 317 noncitizens were registered to vote in the city, although many of those noncitizens had self-reported.

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]

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