These are not what anyone else would consider to be “illegal” ballots. The voters simply messed up when they put the date on by their signature- leaving the date off, transposing numbers, whatever. Mistaken ballots.
“It is a pretty stupid thing to not count someone’s vote simply because they didn’t date an envelope for a ballot,” Bob Harvie Jr., chair of Buck County’s elections board and a Democrat, said last week at a meeting before officials voted 2-1 to tally 405 ballots that did not meet the state’s handwritten-date requirement. “The law needs to be changed.”
Note that the last time this occurred the Republicans argued those SHOULD be counted, as they were losing.
The few extra votes that could be counted will not change the results- the OP is wrong. (well, I guess you can say the the GOP is “:accusing” the Dems, but they always are , and for bogus reasons- like this one).
I have, for at least a quarter century, advocated treating ballots with maximum grace. If we can tell the voter’s intent, let’s work according to that intent; and if we can’t, let’s figure out how to cure it. My position, and the position of most leftists I know, is consistent on this point: an expansive reading of the law that allows more ballots to be counted is superior to a strict reading of the law that rejects ballots whose intent and legitimacy is clear.
Mind you if the GOP is insistent on a strict leading of the law- that is one thing, but they are arguing whichever side is better for them, being immoral hypocrites.
So, this boils down to; Republicans: You’re trying to steal this election! Democrats: We just want to count the votes the same way you wanted them counted last time. Republicans: Exactly, you’re trying to steal this election!
Bricker would be so proud of this thread.
that’s fine and reasonable as a policy statement, but voting officials tasked with counting ballots are not imbued with the discretion to determine whether a ballot does or does not meet their personal standard. They need to follow established laws as to what is and is not a valid ballot and they have clearly, unequivocally, not done so in this instance.
They have not done so in a hope that the current interpretation will be changed by a future lawsuit. There is an argument that the law that prevents such votes from being counted is itself unconstitutional, and they haven’t conceded the case. They’re preserving the record. Claims that they’re trying to steal the election are cynical lies by the same people who made those claims in 2020.
If they’re committing a crime, let them be charged with the specific crime they’re committing. But they’re not.
Governor Shapiro is asking the officials to comply with the courts.
I will note that I have searched for any suggestion that what the officials are doing is actually criminal, and have not found anything other than the Trump campaign and the RNC demanding that they “go to jail”. But nobody with any actual authority has suggested that they could be charged with a crime as of yet, to the best of my knowledge.
Did you actually read the entirety of my post? It’s not that a Senate seat doesn’t have importance, it’s that the whole Bob Casey kerfuffle has absolutely no comparison with the vast litany of criminal things that Trump did to try to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and that bringing up Casey in the same context, with the implication that “Democrats do it, too” is a grossly irresponsible and inappropriate attempt to manufacture false equivalency.
The only reason Trump isn’t in jail right now is that, apparently having been born with a horseshoe up his ass, he got lucky breaks from a Supreme Court that he himself helped to populate with far-right extremists, another lucky break that delayed the Georgia trial and may scuttle it entirely, and then somehow managed to get elected president again by a bunch of ignorant pinheads. The reason that Casey isn’t in jail or charged with anything is because he isn’t doing anything illegal. I don’t know how to put it any more clearly.
You’re right, I would much rather live in a country where precedent by a court did still matter. Unfortunately, that’s not the country we live in. Given that fact, I would, in fact, prefer my public officials to recognize the actual reality.
and deflecting from the issue at hand by bringing up this whataboutism in the context of Republican malfeasance is grossly irresponsible and inappropriate too. Regardless of whether it was done “for the right reasons”, disregarding established law and court orders by election officials can only further undermine society’s belief that election results are counted by some objective standard, rather than the whim of some political official hack. It was the wrong decision and it needs to be called out. Is that law stupid and unnecessarily rigid? Maybe, probably! But it is not for an election official or some county commissioner to try to unilaterally make that decision, and only harm can come from them doing so.
Except that, thanks to the Pennsylvania courts, that’s exactly what is happening. If Republicans only won the seat by disqualifying ballots on bullshit technicalities, then the people deserve to know that, and the only way to know that is to count those ballots.
it’s garden variety political hackery bullshit masquerading as some sort of noble “will of the people” civil disobedience. It’s wrong, regardless of which party is doing it and its ok to call it out.
Bob Casey wrote an op ed that has been (hopefully accurately) summarized by a redditor here
It has this kind of eye popping claim:
Still, other voters across the Commonwealth went out to vote and did everything right, but because of small mistakes and understandable human error – on the part of the voter or due to election officials – their votes have to move through a lengthier process.
While this process has been lengthy and will still take time, I have remained committed to one clear goal: Letting the voices of Pennsylvanians be heard and standing up against efforts to silence and disenfranchise voters in the Commonwealth.
This principle stands in stark opposition to Washington Republicans, who have interrupted this process and filed numerous lawsuits to disenfranchise thousands of voters. Attorneys representing my opponent in this race and national Republicans have argued to disqualify ballots where the voter did everything right, but an election official forgot to counter-sign the ballot envelope.
So if this is correct, Republicans are even trying to disqualify ballots where the only mistake was on the part of the election workers.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court is 5-2 Democratic (our court elections are partisan) and they all seem to agree on the case outcome even though there are multiple concurring decisions.
I think the hand dating requirement makes no sense, but it is our law. I also see no strong reason to think it favors one party, although others obviously disagree.
Looking at the news stories, I see missing details. I could swear reading, in news stories regarding past Pa. election disputes, that so long as the ballot was dated, they didn’t care what date you put there. But this time, if you seem to have reversed the month and day fields, your ballot is bad. (My wife and I were very careful with our ballots, knowing this kind of dispute can happen.)
Here is a fact: Checking every ballot date for plausibility has to be time consuming due to there being multiple possible error types. Many of the dates are surely a hard to read scrawl. Reading bad handwriting, even if just digits, takes skill.
If it looks like the envelope was dated a few days before the ballot was received in the mail, or today, what happens? Do they look at the possibly blurred postmark date, if there is one? Does a second county employee check to see if they agree what date the voter wrote down? I find it hard to believe that every county election employee interpreted the law here exactly the same way.