Keystone Today

The Pennsylvania House this week amended and approved sweeping election legislation, House Bill 1800, setting it up for final legislative approval in mid-December.

The Senate, under Republican control as is the House, is almost sure to send the legislation to Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, who vetoed similar legislation, House Bill 1300, in June.

Wolf told Penn Live he also opposes the updated version of the bill.

“The governor’s spokeswoman Beth Rementer said he believes it creates unacceptable and possibly unconstitutional barriers to voting with its voter ID requirements, particularly the ones related to applications for mail-in ballots,” the news site reported. “He also dislikes moving up the deadline to register to vote to 30 days before an election from the current 15 days, preferring the same-day registration that Joanna McClinton (House Democratic Leader) proposed.”

A floor amendment to HB 1800 will require that all mail ballots received before Election Day be counted by 9 p.m. election night. Those received on Election Day would have to be counted by 2 a.m. the following day. The amendment also requires all election offices to compute all returns from every precinct, excluding provisional and mail ballots, by 6 a.m. on the day after the election.

“Voters should not have to wait a day or two for trustworthy election results,” State Rep. Seth Grove said in a statement. “There have been cases in which a candidate went to bed on election night thinking he or she won, only to find out otherwise the next morning because all the votes hadn’t been counted the previous night. This amendment provides a more than reasonable timeframe to ensure accurate results are delivered on time.”

Former President Donald Trump led Pennsylvania in voting shortly after the polls closed last November but eventually lost the state by more than 80,000 votes once all ballots were counted.

Besides the same-day registration provision, the McClinton (D-Philadelphia) amendment would have allowed more drop boxes than the number permitted in the bill, and it would have removed a voter ID requirement from the bill. Republicans rejected it. 

Wolf cited voter ID as one of the reasons he vetoed HB 1300. But a month later, in an interview with a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, he reversed his position.

Numerous polls have shown that a majority of voters across demographic lines support voter ID. A June poll by Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster showed that 74% of Pennsylvania voters support voter ID.  

Grove’s legislation stems from weeks of hearings held last spring by House State Government Committee, which he chairs.