April 2, 2024 - Epoch Times
11:56
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| In a rare win for election integrity, a federal appeals court has just ruled that mail-in ballots over in Pennsylvania do, indeed, have to be signature-dated in order to be considered valid. | |
| This puts an end to a two-and-a-half-year-long legal battle, which really underscores the difficulty of these different election integrity efforts. | |
| Let me give you a bit of backstory in terms of how this case played out as well as what it means for both the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as well as for the nation as a whole. | |
| And as always, I hope that if you appreciate content like this, you do take a super quick moment to smash those like and subscribe buttons so that the YouTube algorithm will be forced to share this information out to ever more people. | |
| Now to start with, let's rewind the clock back three years. | |
| In 2021, there was a local election in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania for the position of county judge. | |
| The two main candidates were as follows, Mr. Zachary Cohen, the Democrat, and Mr. David Ritter, the Republican. | |
| And initially, after the polls closed and all the votes were counted, the Republican candidate, Mr. David Ritter, he was scheduled to be the winner of the race by a very thin margin of just 71 votes. | |
| However, before he could claim his victory, something you can say interesting happened. | |
| 257 mail-in ballots came in without a date written on them. | |
| 257 undated ballots came back to the elections office. | |
| Now here's the thing. | |
| Having a date written on your ballot envelope is something that is required by Pennsylvania state law. | |
| Pennsylvania law, it stipulates that voters are mandated to write the date on the outer envelope of their mail-in ballot in order for their vote to actually be valid. | |
| These 257 envelopes did not have a date written on them, and so Mr. Ritter, citing state law, tried to prevent these ballots from being processed. | |
| However, at this point, the ACLU swooped in, and acting on behalf of a small group of local voters, they filed a lawsuit urging the court to go ahead and force the counting of these ballots. | |
| The case made its way through the court system, until eventually, in May of 2021, the U.S. | |
| Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ordered the state of Pennsylvania to go ahead and count these undated mail-in ballots. | |
| In explaining their general rationale, Judge Theodore McKee, who was appointed to the bench by Bill Clinton, he said this in part, quote, Congress passed the materiality provision of the Federal Civil Rights Act to ensure qualified voters were now disenfranchised by meaningless requirements that prevented eligible voters from casting their ballots, but had nothing Congress passed the materiality provision of the Federal Civil Rights Act to ensure qualified voters were now disenfranchised | |
| Ignoring ballots because the outer envelope was undated, even though the ballot was undisputably received before the deadline for voting, serves no purpose other than disenfranchising otherwise qualified voters. | |
| This is exactly the type of disenfranchisement that Congress sought to prevent. | |
| And so because the appeals court ruled against Mr. Ritter, the undated ballots were indeed processed. | |
| And wouldn't you believe it? | |
| These mail-in ballots, they overwhelmingly went to the Democrat candidate by a factor of over 2 to 1. | |
| More than 2 to 1 of the votes went to the Democrat candidate, forcing Mr. Ritter to lose the election. | |
| After these votes were tallied, the Democrat finished with 32,669 votes, while Mr. Ritter, the Republican, had 32,664 votes. | |
| This means that the inclusion of these undated mail-in ballots completely flipped the race, taking Mr. Ritter from having a 71-vote margin of victory to instead losing by 5 votes. | |
| And so, Mr. Ritter, he appealed this decision all the way up to the U.S. | |
| Supreme Court, hoping that the highest court in the land would force the elections office to follow the state laws as written. | |
| And wouldn't you believe it? | |
| A short year and a half later, the court came back and ruled in his favor. | |
| Sort of. | |
| Specifically, in October of 2022, the U.S. | |
| Supreme Court vacated the earlier decision that was made by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. | |
| Here was what they wrote in their brief opinion statement. | |
| "The judgment is vacated and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit with instructions to dismiss the case as moot." And the reason that this was only sort of a victory is because despite the U.S. | |
| Supreme Court vacating the ruling from the appeals court, it did not change the fact that Mr. Ritter lost his election. | |
| Furthermore, it technically did not even stop the state of Pennsylvania from being able to do this again, meaning that after the U.S. | |
| Supreme Court decision, the state of Pennsylvania could, once again, count undated ballots. | |
| The only thing that this 2022 U.S. | |
| Supreme Court ruling actually achieved is that it vacated the earlier decision, the one from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, making it such that that earlier decision could not be used as a precedent in a similar case, which was a very timely decision because the midterm elections were right around the corner. | |
| Now, on the very same day that the U.S. | |
| Supreme Court issued this particular opinion and this decision, the Pennsylvania Secretary of State, she came out and she issued guidance to all the counties in the state of Pennsylvania regarding undated ballots. | |
| Here was what the guidance specifically said, and just for your reference, this guidance was sent out by Ms. | |
| Leigh Chapman, who was at that time the acting Pennsylvania Secretary of State. | |
| "Every county is expected to include undated ballots in their official returns for the November 8th election, consistent with the Department of State's guidance." And then if we actually look at the guidance that she was referencing, here's what it said: "Any ballot return envelope that is undated or dated with an incorrect date, but that has been timely received by the county, shall be included in the vote count." Which is all well and good, except for the fact that this guidance is technically illegal. | |
| That's because, according to Pennsylvania state law, any voter who uses an absentee or a mail-in ballot must quote, fill out, date, and sign the declaration that's printed on the envelope used to submit such a ballot. | |
| Meaning that the guidance issued to all counties in Pennsylvania ahead of the 2022 midterms directly contradicted the plain language of the law. | |
| And so essentially, because the U.S. | |
| Supreme Court did not take up the case of Mr. Ritter, well, the Pennsylvania Department of State, they attempted to do the very same thing again, to make sure that all undated mail-in ballots were counted regardless of what Pennsylvania state law actually said. | |
| Instead of waiting until the election was over, Pennsylvania Republicans, they preemptively filed a lawsuit before the 2022 midterms, saying this in part, quote, Republicans are holding Pennsylvania Democrats accountable for their brazen defiance of the Supreme Court and the rules duly set by the legislature. | |
| Pennsylvania Democrats have a history of election integrity failures and Pennsylvanians deserve better. | |
| This lawsuit is the latest step in Republican efforts to promote free, fair, and transparent elections in the Keystone State. | |
| And so, once again, after several more weeks of legal back and forth, the Republicans came out victorious. | |
| Sort of. | |
| With the State Supreme Court ruling in their favor and determining that the guidance that was issued by the Secretary of State was in fact illegal, and the State Supreme Court ordered that all counties within the state do not count any of the ballots that came in undated. | |
| Here's specifically what they said as a part of their ruling, again back in the year 2022. | |
| The Pennsylvania County Board of Elections are hereby ordered to refrain from counting any absentee and mail-in ballots received for the November 8, 2022 general election that are contained in undated or incorrectly dated outer envelopes. | |
| We hereby direct that the Pennsylvania County Boards of Elections segregate and preserve any ballots contained in undated or incorrectly dated outer envelopes. | |
| And so the reason that this was only a partial sort of victory is because even though the state supreme court ordered the ballots to not be counted in this election, they still kicked the can down the road by telling the counties to hold on to their undated ballots just in case they will be counted later. | |
| And indeed, just like clockwork, several Democrat candidates, alongside the NAACP as well as the ACLU, they filed another lawsuit, arguing that not counting these particular ballots is a violation of the Civil Rights Act. | |
| And after another year of legal back and forth, in November of 2023, a judge ruled in their favor, saying that undated mail-in ballots must be counted. | |
| Quote, U.S. | |
| District Judge Susan Paradise Baxter ruled on November 21st that not counting these types of ballots violates the so-called materiality provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which states that the right to vote cannot be denied for an error or omission that is not material for determining whether a person is eligible to vote or not. | |
| As a part of her order, the judge wrote that federal law prohibits a state from erecting immaterial roadblocks such as this to voting. | |
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| And so, this was issued last November. | |
| However, because this is a never-ending battle, the Republican National Committee, they appealed the decision, and after another six months, just three days ago, the courts ruled in their favor. | |
| Specifically, the U.S. | |
| Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, the very same court that many years ago denied Mr. Ritter the election, they actually ruled in favor of the Republicans. | |
| Here's part of what that appellate court wrote in their majority opinion just, again, three days ago. | |
| Quote, A state law that says voters must fill out, date, and sign envelopes containing the ballots is not prevented by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. | |
| The Civil Rights Act bans denying the right of any individual to vote in any election because of an error or omission on any record or paper relating to any application, registration, or other act requisite to voting. | |
| But that provision only applies when the state is determining who may vote. | |
| In other words, its rule stops at the door of the voting place. | |
| The provision does not apply to rules like the date requirement that govern how a qualified voter must cast his ballot for it to be counted. | |
| And as such, after three full years of pretty much non-stop legal battles, the same Third Circuit Court of Appeals that ruled against Mr. Ritter, the Republican candidate, has now made it illegal to count undated mail-in ballots. | |
| And as you would imagine, the RNC was quite pleased with this ruling, saying this in a statement following the ruling, quote, This is a crucial victory for election integrity and voter confidence in the Keystone State and nationwide. | |
| Pennsylvanians deserve to feel confident in the security of their mail-in ballots, and this 3rd Circuit ruling roundly rejects unlawful left-wing attempts to count undated or incorrectly dated mail ballots. | |
| On the flip side, however, you have the ACLU, being among the groups who lost the case, express their disappointment in their own statement. | |
| Quote, If this ruling stands, thousands of Pennsylvania voters could lose their vote over a meaningless paperwork error. | |
| The ballots in question in this case come from voters who are eligible and who met the submission deadline. | |
| In passing the Civil Rights Act, Congress put a guardrail in place to be sure that states don't erect unnecessary barriers that disenfranchise voters. | |
| It's unfortunate that the court failed to recognize that principle. | |
| Voters lose as a result of this ruling. | |
| Now, this particular ruling can still be appealed to the U.S. | |
| Supreme Court, although neither the Democrats nor the ACLU or the NAACP have yet indicated whether they will be appealing the case. | |
| Although I completely would not be surprised if they do. | |
| Until then, if you happen to vote in Pennsylvania, simply make sure that you put a date on the envelope that goes along with your ballot if you happen to be voting by mail, and it's as simple as that. | |
| If you'd like to go into the details of this three-year-long legal drama, I'll throw the links to all my research notes. | |
| You can find them down in the description box below this video. | |
| And then, until next time, I'm your host Roman from The Epoch Times. |
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