GOP Says Pennsylvania Mail-In Voting Law is Invalid

Pennsylvania Republicans are arguing a 2019 law that largely expanded mail-in voting in the Commonwealth has been made invalid by a court ruling.

A group of 14 GOP lawmakers filed a lawsuit against the state’s Acting Secretary Leigh Chapman in the Commonwealth Court on July 20, seeking again to throw out Pennsylvania’s universal mail-in ballot law, Act 77.

It comes two months before the midterm elections this fall featuring high-profile races across the Keystone State.

The lawsuit claims that the mail-in voting law should be nullified under a federal appeals court’s May decision that had allowed election officials to count undated mail-in ballots. The panel said throwing out mail ballots in that election for lacking a handwritten date would violate voters’ civil rights. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania has quietly dismissed Republicans’ request to overturn the court’s order.

Yet provisions of Sections 6 and 8 of Act 77 both require voters to “fill out, date and sign the declaration printed on such envelope,” which apparently goes against the Federal Law based on the court’s judgment.

A non-severability clause written into Act 77 says “the remaining provisions or applications of this act are void” if any of its requirements are struck down. Plaintiffs, therefore, requested the court in the Wednesday lawsuit, declare all remaining provisions of Act 77 invalid and quash the law.

State Rep. Seth Grove, chair of the House State Government Committee, also said last week in a letter that “the entire bill should now be void.”

Acting Secretary of the Commonwealth Leigh Chapman, a Democrat, disagreed in a July 20 letter, saying Act 77 still remains in place, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. “Your specious legal theory perpetuates disinformation,” Chapman wrote.

Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration wrote in a response to a state lawmaker’s query Wednesday that the federal appeals court decision


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