Justices to sort out if mail-in ballot envelopes need dates

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Senior Pennsylvania elections officials argued in a new court filing Tuesday that handwritten dates on the envelopes that many state voters use to mail in ballots should not be deemed mandatory, in part because of a half-century-old legislative ruling deemphasizing their importance. The filing, made under a compressed schedule laid out just four days earlier by the state Supreme Court, concerns a dispute that has repeatedly arisen in state courts since lawmakers made mail-in voting widely allowable three years ago: whether ballots with incorrect or missing dates on their return envelopes can be disqualified. Tom Wolf said that state law between 1945 and 1968 told county election boards to set aside mail-in ballots if the date on the envelope was later than the date of the election. But when the Election Code was amended in 1968, they said, lawmakers “deleted from the Election Code’s canvassing section the requirement that counties set aside ballots based on the date appearing on the ballot-return envelope.” A handwritten exterior envelope date is not needed to ensure a ballot has been received by the Election Day deadline because those ballots are supposed to get time-stamped at county offices.