Posted originally on the CTH on November 1, 2024 | Sundance

Major win for Pennsylvania Republicans and election integrity groups. A few days ago, 3 Democrat judges on the Pennsylvania appellate court (3-2 decision) struck down a date and accuracy requirement for mail in ballots to be received. Today, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court just stayed that ruling and put the date requirement back into effect. This makes it harder for Democrats to cheat. [Pdf Here]

(Pennsylvania) – The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Friday accepted Republicans’ request to again declare that mail ballots returned with a missing or incorrect date cannot be counted this election.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) filed an emergency appeal to ensure that election officials do not leverage a lower court’s ruling handed down Wednesday finding such disqualification violates the state constitution.

That 3-2 ruling concerned 69 misdated and undated ballots in a September special election, where the outcome was not in doubt either way.

But Republicans raised concerns the decision injects new uncertainty in the days leading to the presidential election, where potentially thousands of ballots are at stake in the battleground that both campaigns see as a must-win.

The court’s unsigned order states the lower ruling “shall not be applied to the November 5, 2024 General Election.”

In a concurring opinion, Justice Kevin Dougherty condemned lower courts for intervening too close to an election in recent cases, saying they “repeatedly have taken the bait” despite past warnings.

“To reiterate the point once more: we said what we meant, and we meant what we said. Moving forward, lower courts should think twice — maybe even three times — before granting relief that could arguably be construed as imposing ‘substantial alterations to existing laws and procedures during the pendency of an ongoing election,’” Dougherty wrote. (read more)