 [PennCapitolStar] Fourteen Republican lawmakers filed the challenge last September
| Nice of the courts to get around to dealing with what was an urgent issue in 2020, and remains urgent for 2022. |
Got my main-in ballot for the early primaries yesterday.
A Pennsylvania appeals court has struck down the commonwealth’s landmark 2019 mail-in voting law, though the near certainty of an appeal means voters might not notice a difference until the Supreme Court weighs in.
In a 49-page opinion issued by Judge Mary Leavitt on Friday morning, the court found that the law, which allows all Pennsylvanians to vote by mail without an excuse, was unconstitutionally enacted as a statute, rather than being approved through the state’s long and rigorous constitutional amendment process.
“If presented to the people, a constitutional amendment to end the…requirement of in-person voting is likely to be adopted,” Leavitt wrote. “But a constitutional amendment must be presented to the people and adopted into our fundamental law before legislation authorizing no-excuse mail-in voting can ‘be placed upon our statute books.’”
The law, known as Act 77, was passed by the Republican-controlled General Assembly and signed by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf in fall of 2019. Eleven of the 14 plaintiffs, all of whom are Republican lawmakers, voted for the law.
At the time, it was seen as a bipartisan win that expanded voting access. Since then, millions of Pennsylvanians have used mail-in ballots to participate in democracy.
However, Republicans began to sour on the law, amid former President Donald Trump’s baseless efforts to delegitimize mail-in votes in the lead up to the 2020 election.
In November 2020, after he lost Pennsylvania and the presidency, some of the former president’s allies filed a similar suit to invalidate the law and have millions of legally cast mail-in ballots thrown out.
The state Supreme Court rejected their arguments, but the court will likely hear them anew.
Adam Bonin, a Philadelphia elections attorney who often works for Democrats, told the Capital-Star he expected the ruling to be overturned on appeal to the state Supreme Court.
And if Gov. Tom Wolf does appeal the ruling, Pennsylvania appellate court procedure mandates that the lower court’s order will automatically be stayed — meaning mail-in voting will remain legal until the high court issues a ruling.
While the decision creates another layer of uncertainty on the commonwealth’s upcoming elections, the local officials who run elections are used to it by now, after years of court fights and legislative inaction on election law.
One county election official, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, expressed more displeasure about the timing than the ruling itself.
“An election director looks at this decision and says, ‘who cares?’ It’s going to be appealed,” they told the Capital-Star.
But with election day ticking closer, it does present the spectre of a time crunch in a month or two, when the state Supreme Court has to issue a final order — and “we’ll have no time to deal with the implications.”
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