A federal judge appointed by President Donald Trump rejected a Republican-backed Pennsylvania mail-in ballot requirement on Monday, saying in a 21-page ruling that there is no evidence supporting Republicans’ claim that the requirement helps root out fraud.
Why It Matters
Pennsylvania is a critical battleground state and has been at the center of a number of lawsuits over both federal and state election results.
The question over counting undated mail-in ballots was also the subject of a spate of post-election lawsuits last year in the closely watched Senate race between then incumbent Democratic Senator Bob Casey and his Republican opponent, David McCormick, who won the race.
Matt Slocum/AP
What To Know
The plaintiffs in the case are Bette Eakin, a registered voter in Pennsylvania, and a number of organizations including the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Pennsylvania affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers.
Pennsylvania’s 67 county boards of elections are named as defendants in the case, as are a number of Republican-aligned groups, including the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, and the Republican Party of Pennsylvania.
The lawsuit was filed as a challenge to a Pennsylvania law that requires voters to submit mail ballots to indicate a date on the outer return envelope. Under the statute, if the date on the outer envelope is missing or incorrect, the ballot is thrown out.
In her ruling Monday, U.S. District Judge Susan Baxter, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, wrote that the case “directly implicates the right of citizens of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to cast a vote.”
She ruled that Pennsylvania violated the First and 14th Amendments “by imposing impermissible burdens on Pennsylvanians’ fundamental right to vote—burdens that are not justified by any state interest.”
The date requirement “burdens the fundamental right to vote by disenfranchising some voters for defects in the envelope holding their ballots,” Baxter wrote.
The judge said that although the burden in question is “minimal,” Pennsylvania “has not identified any [state] interests that are served by imposing even this minimal burden on the right to vote. Nor, for that matter, have most of the Defendant county boards of elections identified an interest in requiring a voter to date the outer envelope of their ballot.”
Baxter also singled out the RNC’s and the Berks County Board of Elections’ claim that the mail ballot date requirement helps detect voter fraud.
“Absent from the record, however, is any evidence demonstrating how this requirement furthers that purported interest,” Baxter wrote. She added that other stated interests that the defendants pointed out are similarly “not supported by any evidence of record.”
What People Are Saying
The plaintiffs argued in their original complaint that the Pennsylvania mail-in ballot date requirement was immaterial, saying: “Pennsylvania law determines voter eligibility based on the date of the election—rather than the date of marking the ballot—[so] the Date Instruction provides no information about whether a voter is qualified.”
The defense argued in a September 2024 supplemental brief: Invalidating the date requirement would “improperly erode public confidence in the Commonwealth’s elections and generate an unnecessary and problematic incentive to remain away from the polls…”
What Happens Next
Baxter’s ruling on Monday means Pennsylvania cannot reject undated or wrongly dated mail-in ballots. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court is also deliberating over a case involving such ballots and will issue a ruling about whether counting them violates the Pennsylvania state constitution.
Update 3/31/25 9:41 p.m. ET: This story has been updated with additional information and context.
