Pennsylvania legislative preview: Will election law changes finally pass? | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Pennsylvania lawmakers beginning their new legislative session this month are preparing to debate what changes, if any, should be made to the way the state’s elections are run. Once again, Republicans are planning to champion expanded voter ID requirements, while Democrats want to answer county calls for more time to process mail ballots and implement early voting. Their discussions will follow a highly scrutinized presidential election that ran smoothly compared with the 2020 contest, when counties were slow to produce unofficial results and faced a barrage of fraud claims. Read Article

Pennsylvania court sides with state over Fulton County’s handling of voting machines after 2020 election | Mark Scolforo/Associated Press

A Pennsylvania court on Tuesday ruled 6-1 that the secretary of state has the authority to direct counties not to allow “unauthorized third party access” to voting machines or risk having those machines decertified and unable to be deployed for elections. The Commonwealth Court said the Department of State does not have to reimburse counties when they decertify machines, a defeat for Fulton County in a dispute that arose after two Republican county commissioners permitted Wake Technology Services Inc. to examine and obtain data from Dominion voting machines in 2021. That led the state elections agency to issue a directive against such third-party access based on concerns it could compromise security. Fulton’s machines were decertified as a result of the Wake TSI examination and the secretary of state was sued by the county as well as Republican county commissioners Randy Bunch and Stuart Ulsh. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Five years after changes in election laws, workers still waiting for small fixes to big problems | Tom Shortell/Lehigh Valley News

Pennsylvania’s 2024 election operated like a well-oiled machine this year with no major delays or snafus, but Lehigh County’s top election official warned there’s still trouble under the hood. For years, state and county officials have requested tweaks to Pennsylvania’s election code: more time to pre-canvass mail-in ballots and an earlier voter registration deadline. Other requests, such as a more robust form of early, in-person voting, have cropped up since. But thanks in part to political gridlock and the politicization of elections, none of the changes have gone on the books. Read Article

Pennsylvania investigations into suspicious voter registration forms yield no charges yet | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Investigations by five Pennsylvania counties into the submission of suspicious voter registration forms haven’t resulted in any charges yet, and three of the counties aren’t releasing details about the progress of their inquiries. Votebeat and Spotlight PA followed up with the five counties — Lancaster, Monroe, Lehigh, Berks, and York — that announced investigations before Election Day into what they described then as hundreds of potentially fraudulent voter registration forms dropped off near the Oct. 21 deadline. There is no evidence in any of the counties that the forms under scrutiny resulted in any ineligible voters casting a ballot. Officials emphasized that the suspicious applications were not processed. Read Article

Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey concedes race against Dave McCormick amid recount | Julia Terruso and Katie Bernard/The Philadelphia Inquirer

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.) conceded to Republican Dave McCormick on Thursday, formally ending his reelection bid and acknowledging defeat two weeks after the Associated Press declared McCormick’s victory and after a statewide recount of the race had been triggered. Casey had resisted conceding, citing thousands of votes that still needed to be counted and entering court fights to maximize the number of ballots included. But as final ballots were adjudicated Thursday, Casey’s roughly 16,500-vote deficit was too large to overcome and so large that a recount would not affect it. “I want to thank the people of Pennsylvania for granting me the privilege of serving them for 28 consecutive years in public office as auditor general, state treasurer, and United States senator,” Casey said. “Every day I served in public office, I’ve fought for Pennsylvania workers, children, seniors, people with disabilities, and our veterans. … It has been the honor of my lifetime.” Read Article

Pennsylvania: How Casey-McCormick Senate recount will work | Carter Walker/Votebeat

The race for the U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania is officially heading to a recount. On Wednesday, Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt ordered Pennsylvania’s 67 counties to conduct a recount under a provision of the state election code that requires one when the margin of a statewide race is within 0.5%. With Republican Dave McCormick receiving 3,380,310 votes to incumbent Democratic Sen. Bob Casey’s 3,350,972 votes as of noon Wednesday, the two candidates were separated by just 0.43%. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Small ballot errors, security procedures led to Election Day mishap in Cambria County | David Hurst/The Tribune-Democrat

Set between blocks of computer “timing” code, seven tiny numbers line the left-hand margin of the Election Day ballots that Cambria County eventually started scanning to add up results Nov. 5. They were identical to the precinct “test ballots” the county tested in early October, Cambria County Solicitor Ron Repak Jr. said. The ones that failed to scan Election Day morning were missing those numbers. Cambria County officials acknowledged their own security procedure likely prevented the issue from being flagged sooner. After running their test ballots through the scanning machines in early October, election officials sealed up the electronic scanning devices to prevent anyone from tampering with the machines. The official Election Day ballots that arrived afterward – believed to be identical – sat untested in the weeks prior to Nov. 5, Repak and Cambria County President Commissioner Scott Hunt said. Read Article

Pennsylvania counties counted mail ballots faster this year than in 2020 | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Mail ballots in Pennsylvania were counted much faster in this year’s election than in 2020. By 3 a.m. Wednesday, 54 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties had counted 90% or more of their mail ballots, according to data released by the state. By roughly 5 p.m., 97% of the state’s mail ballots had been counted. In 2020, mail ballot counting went on for several days, preventing media organizations from declaring a winner in the state until the Saturday after the election. That year, the state had roughly 700,000 mail ballots or 35% more than this year. In the years since 2020, counties have grown more experienced with handling large volumes of mail ballots, and have purchased better, faster equipment, which in combination has enabled counties to process ballots more efficiently. That combination “has a big impact,” said Al Schmidt, Secretary of the Commonwealth. “It’s still a big lift, and I think that’s something that’s not considered when people shrug off the idea of more ballot pre-canvassing.” Read Article

Pennsylvania: Activists are challenging the eligibility of hundreds of voters in Philadelphia’s suburbs. Experts say the effort is legally baseless. | Jeremy Roebuck and Katie Bernard/The Philadelphia Inquirer

In what appears to be an organized effort, right-leaning activists have challenged the mail ballot applications of hundreds of voters in the Philadelphia suburbs in recent days, claiming their targets no longer live at the addresses where they are registered to vote. But voting rights advocates broadly dismiss the effort as baseless, legally invalid, and born of a misunderstanding of government data. While they predict most of the challenges will be swiftly rejected, they say the campaign is yet another instance of a loose network of right-wing organizers billing themselves as “election integrity” advocates sowing confusion about state voting laws and creating headaches for elections administrators already bombarded by misinformation surrounding the voting process. Read Article

Pennsylvania Supreme Court Allows Provisional Votes After Mail Ballot Rejections | /Simon J. LevienThe New York Times

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that voters who submit mail-in ballots that are rejected for not following procedural directions can still cast provisional ballots. The decision is likely to affect thousands of mail-in ballots among the millions that will be cast in Pennsylvania, the swing state that holds the most electoral votes and is set to be the most consequential in the presidential election. The court ruled 4 to 3 that the Butler County board of elections must count provisional ballots cast by several voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected for lacking mandatory secrecy envelopes. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Election officials brace for misinformation, lawsuits | Katie Bernard, Julia Terruso and Jeremy Roebuck/The Philadelphia Inquirer

Elections officials across Pennsylvania are hopeful the 2024 presidential race won’t be a repeat of the chaos of 2020 — marked by a days-long wait for results, a deluge of misinformation, and baseless court challenges that dragged on for weeks. But even as they say they’re better prepared this year to handle the problems from four years ago, many are bracing for another tight race that could breed new areas of confusion and uncertainty amid an intensifying culture of election denialism if the nation once again waits on Pennsylvania to know who the next president will be. “The longer it takes to decide who the winner is, the more opportunity there is for unrest,” said Neil Makhija, chair of the Montgomery County Election Board. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Republicans challenge legitimacy of overseas votes, including military | Colby Itkowitz and Amy Gardner/The Washington Post

Republican congressmen from Pennsylvania have filed a federal lawsuit seeking stricter scrutiny of votes cast by U.S. citizens living abroad, reflecting a new GOP strategy to challenge the eligibility of a group of voters that includes overseas military personnel. The lawmakers claim in the suit, which was filed this week, that because local election officials in Pennsylvania are not required to verify the identity or eligibility of voters who register overseas, those ballots are vulnerable to fraud. They have asked a federal judge to require officials to set aside completed ballots and not count them until voter eligibility can be determined. The lawsuit is notable for targeting a group of voters long thought to favor Republicans because of the prevalence of military personnel stationed overseas, but that is now seen as more evenly divided or even leaning Democratic. The suit adds to a long list of Republican-backed litigation around the country with just weeks to go before the Nov. 5 election, with much of it aimed at disqualifying mail-in votes or removing ineligible voters from rolls. Read Article

Pennsylvania mail ballot dating issue may be bound for U.S. Supreme Court | Carter Walker/Votebeat

The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether requiring voters to date their mail ballot return envelopes violates federal law. The group filed its petition Friday on behalf of the Pennsylvania branch of the NAACP. It follows a separate request from voting rights groups this week to Pennsylvania’s highest court for an expedited ruling on the date requirement. “The right to vote is one of the most important in this country,” said Janette Wallace, general counsel of the NAACP. “Ballots should not be rejected because of irrelevant errors. We will continue to fight so that voters’ voices may be heard. That’s why we’re taking this to the Supreme Court.” Read Article

Pennsylvania court says county should have warned voters before rejecting their mail ballots | Carter Walker/Votebeat

A Western Pennsylvania county that rejected hundreds of mail ballots in the April primary should have notified voters beforehand, a state appellate court ruled Tuesday. The ruling could add pressure on other counties to notify voters of errors with their mail ballots for the November election. In a 2-1 decision, a panel of the Commonwealth Court agreed with a lower court judge that Washington County erred when it adopted a policy to reject mail ballots without telling voters and had a duty to inform them of their errors. “The current policy emasculates the Election Code’s guarantees by depriving voters … the opportunity to contest their disqualification or to avail themselves of the statutory failsafe of casting a provisional ballot,” Judge Michael Wojcik wrote for the majority. The decision applies to Washington County and does not set a statewide legal precedent, but county attorneys are likely to take note of the court’s opinion when advising their boards of elections about how to handle mail ballots with errors. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Republicans Try to Block Voters From Fixing Problems With Ballots | Maggie Astor and Neil Vigdor/The New York Times

The Republican National Committee and the Pennsylvania Republican Party are suing to try to stop election officials in the state from letting voters correct technical problems with their mail ballots. The Republican lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court against Secretary of State Al Schmidt and the state’s 67 county election boards, would also stop voters from being able to cast a provisional ballot if their mail ballot is rejected over a technical problem. More than half of states allow curing for some types of errors, such as a missing signature or date on a ballot envelope, or a signature that doesn’t match the one election officials have on file for the voter. Former President Donald J. Trump railed against the process as he falsely alleged election fraud in 2020 and tried to overturn his loss, and it has been a point of contention since then in Pennsylvania and in other states. Read Article

Pennsylvania polling place lookup tool has errors that could stymie voters | Carter Walker/Votebeat

An official government online tool designed to help Pennsylvanians find their polling places is riddled with misspellings and other quirks that make it difficult for some voters to use. The errors — which users encounter when they search for their municipality and street name — affect as many as 85,000 of the state’s 8.9 million voters, a Votebeat and Spotlight PA analysis found. The Pennsylvania Department of State said counties enter their own address information into a centralized voter management system that powers the lookup tool, and it’s their responsibility to fix the problems. Read Article

Pennsylvania voters can cast a provisional ballot if their mail ballot is rejected, court says | Marc Levy/Associated Press

A court decided Thursday that voters in the presidential battleground of Pennsylvania can cast provisional ballots in place of mail-in ballots that are rejected for a garden-variety mistake they made when they returned it. Democrats typically outvote Republicans by mail by about 3-to-1 in Pennsylvania, and the decision by a state Commonwealth Court panel could mean that hundreds or thousands more votes are counted in November’s election, when the state is expected to play an outsized role in picking the next president. The three-member panel ruled that nothing in state law prevented Republican-controlled Butler County from counting two voters’ provisional ballots in the April 23 primary election, even if state law is ambiguous. Read Article

Pennsylvania: 2020 election deniers ordered to pay $1 million in voting machine dispute | Zachary Cohen/CNN

A Pennsylvania judge has determined that three 2020 election deniers must pay nearly $1 million in fees as the result of a years-long legal dispute with state officials over voting equipment used during the last presidential race, according to recent court filings. Recommendations from the judge, who was appointed to serve as a special master overseeing the case, attach a dollar figure to sanctions previously imposed by the state’s Supreme Court against two Republican county commissioners and their attorney for allowing an outside firm to examine voting equipment after the 2020 election – despite a court order prohibiting them to do so, according to the new filings. The case, which dates back to 2021, involves actions taken by two Fulton County, Pennsylvania, commissioners – Stuart Ulsh and Randy Bunch – who sought to have Dominion voting equipment examined by a third-party after the 2020 election. Many of former President Donald Trump’s allies falsely blamed Dominion’s software for his election defeat. Read Article

Pennsylvania Judge Rules Butler County Voters Cannot Cure ‘Naked’ Mail-in Ballots | Rachel Selzer/Democracy Docket

As a result of a ruling issued last Friday by a Pennsylvania judge, Butler County voters will not be able to cure defective mail-in ballots that are missing inner secrecy envelopes — also known as “naked ballots.” The ruling, which is expected to be appealed, upholds a prior decision from the Butler County Board of Elections refusing to allow two voters to cure their “naked” mail-in ballots cast in the state’s 2024 primary election. “It is the voter’s burden to ensure they have completed the steps necessary for their mail-in ballot to be included in the tabulation,” last week’s order reads. The judge added that it is the task of the Pennsylvania Legislature, not the court, to implement a new set of curing procedures to remedy defective mail-in ballots. Read Article

Five of Pennsylvania’s ‘fake electors’ from 2020 are back on Trump’s 2024 slate | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Five Pennsylvania Republicans who joined an alternate slate of electors for Donald Trump in 2020 will again serve as presidential electors in this year’s contest. William “Bill” Bachenberg, Bernadette Comfort, Ash Khare, Patricia Poprik, and Andrew Reilly are included on a list of electors submitted to the Pennsylvania Department of State by the GOP. Those electors, along with 15 others, drew criticism after submitting their names as electors for Pennsylvania in December 2020 and casting votes for then-President Trump, even though Joe Biden won the state’s popular vote. But unlike similar groups of alternate or “fake” electors in other swing states in 2020, the Pennsylvania slate avoided legal repercussions because of a caveat they included in the certificate documenting their vote. Read Article

Pennsylvania’s Department of State guidance was a 2020 lightning rod. This is how it works. | Carter Walker/Spotlight PA

When legislative Republicans urged Congress to reject Pennsylvania’s electoral votes for Joe Biden in 2020, they didn’t cite voter fraud or illegal activity. Instead, they pointed to something seemingly innocuous: guidance from the Pennsylvania Department of State. State Republicans including then-state House Speaker Bryan Cutler accused the agency of undermining Pennsylvania’s new mail voting law. Jake Corman, then the state Senate’s majority leader, called on former Secretary Kathy Boockvar to step down, saying, “To have this sort of stuff going on at the 11th hour is unconscionable.” Corman was referencing guidance issued by Boockvar the day before the November 2020 election that advised counties to notify voters of fatal defects with their mail ballots and have them vote provisionally at a polling place. Some counties followed the guidance, and some didn’t. Read Article

Pennsylvania’s long-running dispute over dates on mail-in voting ballots is back in the courts | Mark Scolforo/Associated Press

A technical requirement that Pennsylvania voters write accurate dates on the exterior envelope of mail-in ballots was again the subject of a court proceeding on Thursday as advocates argued the mandate unfairly leads to otherwise valid votes being thrown out. A five-judge Commonwealth Court panel heard about two hours of argument in a case that was filed in May, even though the date requirement has been upheld both by the state Supreme Court and the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The case was brought by the Black Political Empowerment Project, Common Cause and allied advocacy groups against the secretary of state and the elections boards in Philadelphia and Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh. They argued that enforcing the date requirement infringes upon voting rights and that none of the prior cases on the topic directly ruled whether it runs afoul of the state constitution’s Free and Equal Elections Clause. Read Article

Pennsylvania presidential election results could again take days to count | Colby Itkowitz and Derek Hawkins/The Washington Post

mail-in ballots, his lead shrunk and then disappeared. By Saturday, Joe Biden was the clear winner of Pennsylvania — and with it, the presidency. The protracted counting process left a days-long vacuum that Trump filled with demands to stop counting the ballots while he was still ahead, declaring victory in Pennsylvania and building the false narrative that the mail-in votes were fraudulent. It became a core part of the false narrative that helped propel Trump’s “Stop the Steal” crusade and spurred election denialism among his allies and supporters that has continued to this day. The delay was caused by a quirk of Pennsylvania’s election law, which forbids the opening of mail-in ballots until 7 a.m. on the day of the election. Read Article

Pennsylvania directs counties to print full year on mail ballot envelopes | Carter Walker/Votebeat

The Pennsylvania Department of State is hoping another change to mail ballot return envelopes will eliminate the chance of ballots being rejected this November because of voters failing to write in the year completely. In a directive earlier this month, the Department of State told counties that they should now preprint ballot return envelopes with the full, four-digit year in the date field, leaving voters to fill in just the month and day alongside their signature. “We conducted an analysis after this election of why ballots were rejected,” said Al Schmidt, secretary of the commonwealth. “We didn’t see a significant number of ballots missing the full year, but there were some, and every vote is precious in every election.” It’s the second modification to the envelopes since the 2023 municipal elections, as state officials try to cut down on the number of ballots rejected for lacking a properly filled out date and resolve differing interpretations among counties on whether to count these ballots. The move will also eliminate a risk of lawsuits in November over whether incomplete-year ballots should be accepted or rejected. Read Article

Pennsylvania House passes bill to avoid election certification logjam | Carter Walker/Votebeat

In a bipartisan effort to avert a potential crisis in certifying November’s election results, the Pennsylvania House passed a bill Tuesday that would cement the timelines for resolving post-election legal battles and prevent delays in finalizing the state’s electoral votes. A federal law passed in 2022, the Electoral Count Reform Act, set a strict deadline for states to certify slates of presidential electors: Dec. 11. But Pennsylvania doesn’t have its own set of deadlines to meet that target, which could set the state up for a potential conflict with the federal law. “This gap poses a significant risk of missing the federally mandated deadlines for certifying presidential election results,” said Rep. Benjamin Sanchez (D-Montgomery), the bill’s prime sponsor. “Our goal with HB 2473 is to mitigate this risk and guarantee Pennsylvania’s voice is heard and respected when Congress counts the state’s electors.” Read Article

Pennsylvania: Right-wing group sues over errors in voter registration records | Angela Couloumbis and Carter Walker/Spotlight PA

A far-right group is asking a judge to order Pennsylvania to clean up its voter roll, citing flaws it claims to have found in voter registration data as evidence that the state is violating federal law. The group’s claims, however, appear to contradict facts about how the state’s voting systems work, reflecting what one election expert suggested is a “gross misunderstanding of election law.” Much of the information in the suit comes from groups with histories of making false claims about the state’s voter rolls, and the suit includes at least one easily disproved claim. The lawsuit is part of a broader strategy that the lead plaintiff, United Sovereign Americans, has acknowledged: to challenge voter rolls across the country, in separate federal court jurisdictions, to force the issue up to the U.S. Supreme Court in time to affect the 2024 general election. The group filed a similar suit in Maryland that was dismissed in May because the plaintiffs didn’t have legal grounds to sue. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Partisan gridlock prevents fixes to voting laws as presidential election looms | Marc Levy/Associated Press

Pennsylvania is seeing lots of action targeting gaps in its vote-by-mail laws. The problem is that it’s in the courtroom and not the legislature. That could make the most populous presidential swing state a hotbed of challenges and conspiracy theories if the November election is close, as expected. The state also has a U.S. Senate contest between Democratic incumbent Bob Casey and Republican challenger David McCormick that will help determine control of the chamber, increasing scrutiny on election offices if lawmakers can’t break a partisan stalemate and vote-counting is slowed by mailed ballots. “Everyone just really feels how high the stakes are in Pennsylvania, being the largest swing state in the country,” said Lauren Cristella, president and CEO of the Committee of Seventy, a Philadelphia-based good-government group. Read Article

Pennsylvania: What you need to know about election recounts in Pennsylvania | Carter Walker/Votebeat

In 2020, former President Donald Trump’s campaign paid $3 million so Wisconsin would recount votes in two counties. The result: Joe Biden’s lead grew by 87 votes. Such a recount would not be possible in Pennsylvania. Here, a recount is automatically ordered if a statewide race falls within a certain margin. Voters can also initiate recounts in their own precincts. With another highly contentious rematch between the two on the table for this November, an automatic recount cannot be ruled out. In recent years, supporters of losing candidates have also initiated precinct-level recounts that have little chance of changing a race’s outcome but can be used to disrupt the election process. Read Article

Pennsylvania voting rights groups are suing to allow undated ballots to be counted. They hope to win before November’s election. | Katie Bernard/Philadelphia Inquirer

Pennsylvania voting rights groups are once again seeking to overturn a state law that bars undated or incorrectly dated mail ballots from being counted. The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and Public Interest Law Center filed a lawsuit Tuesday in Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court on behalf of eight voting rights and civil rights organizations. The suit, which was filed against Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt and election officials in Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties, argues that the disqualification of undated ballots violates the Pennsylvania Constitution, which guarantees a right to vote in free and equal elections. Read Article

Pennsylvania election directors like new mail ballot materials, even as some voters filled them out improperly | Ford Turner/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Scores of April primary election mail ballots were rejected in some areas of Pennsylvania because voters failed to put the last two digits of the year on newly redesigned ballot materials – but that didn’t stop officials from giving the redesign a thumbs-up. The redesign, announced by the administration of Gov. Josh Shapiro late last year, was intended to decrease voter confusion associated with mail ballots, which debuted on a broad scale in 2020. Among other things, the redesign involved easily identifiable secrecy envelopes, standardized full-page instructions with graphics, and a pre-filled “20” at the beginning of the ‘year’ space on the outside or “declaration” envelope. Secretary of State Al Schmidt earlier this month said counties reported a 13.5% decrease from 2023 in mail ballots rejected for the reasons that the state had tried to address. Read Article