Pa. GOP wants to change mail-in ballot counting guidance after SCOTUS ruling

By: KDKA-TV's Seth Kaplan

HARRISBURG, Pa. (KDKA) — A spokesperson for Governor Tom Wolf (D) has dismissed a request by state House Republicans to segregate undated mail-in ballots as an attempt "to sow confusion" and "disrupt our voting process." 

Earlier Thursday, the top two Pennsylvania State House Republicans, Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff and Bryan Cutler, sent Acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman a letter asking her to change her guidance to county election officials following a U.S. Supreme Court decision earlier this week, which Republicans believe casts doubt over whether mail-in ballots should count if their outer envelopes are either undated or incorrectly dated. 

Benninghoff and Cutler repeated Republican assertions that it "is clear that no-excuse absentee ballots must be dated to be valid" but said in any case, with the matter unresolved, undated ballots that are counted should be separated in case a court later rules that they're invalid. 

"It's a small request," Jason Gottesman, a spokesman for House Republicans, said of the letter. "It's a common-sense request." 

The Department of State's current guidance – which it updated in September – doesn't prevent counties from counting but then segregating mail-in ballots. But it doesn't require them to do so. Republicans' complaint about that? 

Guidance to segregate the ballots "would essentially ensure that everybody is getting the same guidance from the department, so you don't have 67 different interpretations," Gottesman said, referring to Pennsylvania's 67 counties. 

Generally, once a ballot is counted, there's no way to trace it back to the envelope in which it arrived. 

"Segregating them, as the letter requested today, is really the only way to ensure that if there are any lawsuits over this following the 2022 election, that those ballots are preserved so that they can be counted or not counted," Gottesman said. 

Democrats say that's disingenuous. 

"Too many Republicans continue to sow confusion and seek to disrupt our voting process, just as the multiple failed attempts to invalidate election results through the courts have done," Elizabeth Rementer, Wolf's spokesperson, said. "Their misinterpretation of the recent Supreme Court ruling is just one more example of irresponsible efforts to discredit the democratic process and set up a sequel to the post-2020 General Election chaos."

The Supreme Court didn't rule on whether undated ballots should be counted, Rementer said. Rather, she said, it "merely vacated" a lower court ruling about undated ballots in a previous election "as 'moot' because that election had long ago been decided, and there was no longer any disputed issue."

A spokeswoman for the Department of State said the department had received the letter from Benninghoff and Cutler and was reviewing it.