08/26/25
The Republican National Committee was dealt a blow by a unanimous decision of the Third Circuit Appeals Court in the RNC's effort to discard undated and misdated ballots in Pennsylvania.
The three-judge panel said in the 55-page ruling that the affected ballots needed to be counted and failing to do so was unconstitutional. Pennsylvania voters are required to write the date on the envelope for their mail-in ballots.
'Discarding thousands of ballots every election is not a reasonable trade-off in view of the date requirement's extremely limited and unlikely capacity to detect and deter fraud.'
"The date requirement imposes a burden on Pennsylvanians' constitutional right to vote," the court ruling reads. "And it culminates in county election boards discarding thousands of ballots each time an election is held. The date requirement will not protect against the vast majority of attempts at voter fraud."
