The U.S. Supreme Court signaled it will agree to hear a Republican bid to disenfranchise large numbers of voters by requiring Pennsylvania election officials to throw out ballots with missing or mistaken dates on the envelope.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The court allowed Prof. Michael T. Morley of Florida State University\u2019s College of Law to submit an amicus brief<\/a> arguing for granting review and invited the Solicitor General to file its own brief \u201cexpressing the views of the United States.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The move strongly indicates the Supreme Court will take up the case, Eakin v. Adams County Board of Elections<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The lawsuit stems<\/a> from a 2022 challenge to the Commonwealth\u2019s instructions to county election boards to reject mail-in ballots that were cast on time but either were undated or wrongly dated on the outer return envelope.*<\/p>\n The Democratic plaintiffs argued \u2014 and the lower courts agreed \u2014 that punishing someone with disenfranchisement for forgetting a date or writing the wrong one on an outer envelope is disproportionate to the error, and serves no purpose in ensuring the voter is legitimate.\u00a0<\/p>\n U.S. District Court Judge Susan Paradise Baxter, a Trump appointee, ruled that the 1st and 14th Amendments prevented election officials from spiking ballots over such trivial paperwork mistakes.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn this case, the weight of the burden on the citizens\u2019 right to vote is not counterbalanced by evidence of any governmental interest,\u201d Baxter wrote in 2025. \u201cAccordingly, the enforcement of the date provisions does not pass constitutional muster.\u201d<\/p>\n The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision a few months later in an opinion<\/a> written by Judge D. Brooks Smith, a George W. Bush appointee.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe date requirement seems to hamper rather than facilitate election efficiency. By its nature, it fails to add solemnity to the process of voting,\u201d Smith wrote. \u201cAnd discarding thousands of ballots every election is not a reasonable trade-off in view of the date requirement\u2019s extremely limited and unlikely capacity to detect and deter fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n If the Supreme Court ultimately does take up this case, it will be a reversal of sorts, as the high bench decided against hearing a similar Pennsylvania case last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n The issue has been the subject<\/a> of numerous lawsuits in recent years, leading to confusion across the Commonwealth. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court is considering a separate lawsuit which argues the instructions violate state laws. Multiple lower court rulings have found that disqualifying mail-in ballots with faulty dates violates the Pennsylvania Constitution\u2019s Free and Equal Elections Clause.\u00a0<\/p>\n Pennsylvania\u2019s Department of State redesigned<\/a> mail-in ballots envelopes in 2023 and again last summer to make the process less confusing to voters and reduce the number of rejected ballots.\u00a0<\/p>\n