{"id":174462,"date":"2026-04-24T02:20:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T02:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/174462\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T02:20:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T02:20:14","slug":"pa-supreme-court-case-challenges-state-rule-for-registering-voters-spotlight-pa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/174462\/","title":{"rendered":"PA Supreme Court case challenges state rule for registering voters \u2022 Spotlight PA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania\u2019s free newsletter here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Should voter registration applications be rejected if voters\u2019 personal information doesn\u2019t match government databases?<\/p>\n

The Pennsylvania Department of State said in 2018 that the answer should be no. But in a case currently pending before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Potter County Commissioner Robert Rossman is arguing the department is misinterpreting the law.<\/p>\n

If Rossman\u2019s challenge is successful, it could result in more voter applications being rejected.<\/p>\n

In 2018, the Department of State issued a directive<\/a> stating that, based on state and federal law, counties can\u2019t reject voter applications solely because the driver\u2019s license number or last four digits of the voter\u2019s Social Security number don\u2019t match state or federal databases, as could happen if the voter makes a mistake when filling out the application.<\/p>\n

\u201cCounties must ensure their procedures comply with state and federal law, which means that if there are no independent grounds to reject a voter registration application other than a nonmatch, the application may not be rejected and must be processed like all other applications,\u201d the directive reads. Instead, the state argues the mismatches must be investigated.<\/p>\n

At any given time, thousands of applications are in a \u201cpending\u201d status while these investigations occur, according to an affidavit in the case from Deputy Secretary Jonathan Marks. A spokesperson for the department said applicants with mismatched information are not able to vote until the mismatch is reconciled.<\/p>\n

But Rossman says the directive is preventing him from keeping his county\u2019s voter roll clean, and he\u2019s asking the court to do away with it.<\/p>\n

County commissioners are tasked with overseeing voter registration in their county, and the laws governing those duties say that, if an application isn\u2019t \u201cproperly completed,\u201d then it must be rejected. Rossman is arguing that when the applicant\u2019s personal data is mismatched, it means the application wasn\u2019t properly completed \u2014 and therefore must be rejected.<\/p>\n

Rossman is a Republican with hardline conservative views on election security and other issues. He has said in the past that the 2020 election was a \u201cfraud<\/a>\u201d and \u201cstatistically impossible<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rossman first filed his case in the state\u2019s Commonwealth Court shortly after the 2024 election. He is being represented by local attorneys working alongside Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections, a right-leaning nonprofit focused on election issues. A three-judge panel dismissed his complaint in December, but Rossman appealed to the state Supreme Court in January.<\/p>\n

The Department of State\u2019s directive \u201cimpedes his ability to identify duplicate registrations\u201d by cross-checking the ID numbers on new registration applications with those of voters already on the voter roll, Rossman\u2019s attorneys argued in his original court complaint<\/a>. \u201cThe fact that Commissioner Rossman has been precluded, on pain of criminal penalty, from conducting the required examination of voter applications also undermines faith in the integrity of the election process.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Department of State, for its part, argues that while federal law requires voter applications to have a space for driver\u2019s licence and Social Security numbers, it doesn\u2019t require applications to be rejected if those numbers don\u2019t match and neither does state law. The state also argues that state law requires mismatches to be investigated, but not outright rejected unless there is another disqualifying factor. If the investigation can\u2019t resolve the mismatch, then the application can be rejected, the state says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn short, the fundamental disagreement in this case is not truly about what the law allows or requires, but rather is rooted in Commissioner Rossman\u2019s insistence on ignoring what the Directive and the [Commonwealth Court] opinion actually say,\u201d the state wrote in its brief<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While You\u2019re Here<\/p>\n

Spotlight PA\u2019s nonprofit reporting is a free public service, but it depends on your support. Give now to ensure it can continue.<\/p>\n

Rossman said in an interview that the department is trying to recast in court what the plain text of the directive says. He agrees an investigation needs to be done to determine if the mismatches are a mistake and that the applications shouldn\u2019t be rejected outright. But, he said, the directive still requires counties to accept the applications even once the investigations are done.<\/p>\n

If the state\u2019s argument is that the applications should be rejected if the investigation fails to resolve the mismatch, he argued, then the state should amend its directive.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the pattern with the Department of State \u2014 they put out vague directives,\u201d Rossman said. \u201cThey just keep making things up as they go along. If that\u2019s what they actually meant to say, it would literally take them 10 minutes\u201d to amend it.<\/p>\n

Rossman\u2019s case is not the first to challenge the directive. Conservative activist Heather Honey challenged it in 2023, but the Commonwealth Court rejected that lawsuit last May<\/a>. Honey is now a deputy assistant secretary<\/a> for election integrity in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Rossman’s case raises different legal questions.<\/p>\n

Rossman said he had no contact with Honey about her case.<\/p>\n

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29897,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-174462","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-pennsylvania","9":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","10":"tag-pennsylvania-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}