Keystone Today

State Rep. Seth Grove (R-Grove), one of the leading advocates for election reform in the Commonwealth, could barely contain himself on his Twitter account after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled yesterday that undated mail ballots should not be counted in next Tuesday’s general election.  

“If you don’t want to see multiple retweets of the PA Supreme Court ruling upholding the LAW, then you might want to mute or unfollow me this evening,” he wrote.

The undated ballots have become a flash point in the battle between Republican lawmakers, GOP officials and the Department of State, which oversees elections in Pennsylvania. 

In-mid October, Acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman, appointed by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, instructed counties to count the ballots soon after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Ritter v. Migliori that the requirement in state law to date the ballots did not violate the Materiality Provision of the 1964 Civil Rights Law – meaning that the law was not discriminatory.

Removing the undated ballots from the race could be critical in close races, and recent polling shows that in the U.S. Senate race between Republican Mehmet Oz and Democrat John Fetterman, Fetterman has a one-point lead, within the margin of error. The winner in the race could determine which party controls the Senate.

State and national GOP groups sued over Chapman's guidance to the counties.

The Ritter v. Migliori case stems from 257 undated mail ballots cast in November 2021 in Lehigh County in a race for three open seats on the Common Pleas Court. The Lehigh County Board of Elections ruled that the votes be counted, the reasoning that the failure to date the outer envelopes was a “technical error.”

David Ritter, a Republican candidate, appealed to state court – he was ahead of fourth-place candidate Democrat Zac Cohen by just 71 votes. Under a delayed ruling, he eventually conceded the election.

In an interview conducted before the state Supreme Court ruling on the ballots, Grove said that the ballot controversy was just one of many voter issues creating uncertainty and mistrust among the electorate.

“We still have a patchwork of procedures in the counties when they should all be operating under the same user manual set down in legislation,” he told Keystone Today. “The problem is we have a governor who doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with the system.”

In June 2021, Wolf vetoed Grove’s sweeping election reform legislation, HB 1300, citing that a voter ID provision – popular among voters -- would suppress the vote among minorities. A month later he reversed his position.

Another lingering controversy that would have been settled under Grove’s legislation involves drop boxes for mail ballots. Chester County is one of the few counties that acted on the boxes and got it right, he says. There, Court of Common Pleas Judge William Mahon oversaw a case where the County Board of Elections agreed in mid-October that the boxes must be manned, have video surveillance and specified hours of availability, not available 24/7. Similar regulations are contained in HB 1300, and later version of election reform, HB 1800.

“However, it is frustrating more counties don’t have these measures in place,” Grove said in statement reacting to the procedural decision in Chester County. “They very well could, but Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed the Voting Rights Protection Act (HB 1300), which included drop box policies now being put into effect in Chester County. If he hadn’t wielded his veto pen, all voters across Pennsylvanian would have the same safety measures afforded to only Chester County voters.”