In a letter we sent with ACLU-PA, we warn that Washington County’s decision to end its notice-and-cure process for mail-in ballots could disenfranchise hundreds of voters and likely violates voters’ legal rights. The Pennsylvania county recently decided to stop notifying mail-in voters who make clerical mistakes on their ballot declarations that those ballots will not be counted, denying them to chance to cure those clerical errors (as they had been able to do under previous policy) or to vote provisionally at the polls on election day.
Today, a Delaware County court has ruled that provisional ballots that are submitted after a voter’s mail ballot is rejected due to errors must be counted
July 7, 2023 – Our clients in a May 25 lawsuit against the Delaware County Board of Elections, three long-time senior voters, submitted provisional ballots in the May 16 primary after being notified that their mail-in ballots would not be counted. They were disenfranchised when the board, relying on an unpublished court decision that misinterpreted […]
March 11, 2022 – Formerly incarcerated Pennsylvania voters and the NAACP – Pennsylvania State Conference have filed an amicus brief with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, supporting the Legislative Reapportionment Commission (LRC)’s decision to take a major step towards ending the practice of “prison gerrymandering” in their 2022 Pennsylvania state House and Senate redistricting plans. By […]
August 24, 2021–Today, Pennsylvania took a big step forward as a democracy. In a 3-2 vote, the Legislative Reapportionment Commission (LRC)—the state panel authorized under the Pennsylvania Constitution to draw state legislative district lines—adopted a resolution to count state prison inmates at their home addresses, rather than the addresses of their cells, when determining legislative […]
A federal appeals court in Philadelphia today upheld a district court ruling that denied President Trump’s attempt to block certification of Pennsylvania’s election results and to discard valid and legally cast ballots
November 21, 2020 – A federal district court judge today dismissed a lawsuit brought by President Trump’s campaign for reelection against Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar and seven counties, dealing a crippling blow to the president’s attempts to undermine the election’s expected results in the commonwealth. In an amended version of the lawsuit filed […]
November 5, 2020 — Voting rights organizations are fighting back against an attempt by Republican candidates in Pennsylvania to invalidate valid ballots cast by eligible voters. State representative candidate Joseph Hamm and U.S. Representative Mike Kelly, along with four voters, filed a lawsuit in Commonwealth Court on Election Day, claiming that county election officials who […]
September 17, 2020 – The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruled today that state law allows county bureaus of elections to set up drop boxes and satellite offices to accept mail and absentee ballots. In a lawsuit brought by the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, the court also found that Pennsylvania law requiring all mail and absentee ballots […]
August 24, 2020–A federal court yesterday delayed a lawsuit brought by President Trump’s campaign against the commonwealth of Pennsylvania and all 67 counties. Judge Nicholas Ranjan of the federal district court in Pittsburgh issued a stay in the case until October 5, pending the outcome of a lawsuit in state court brought by Pennsylvania Democrats […]
