PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Pennsylvania courts have issued two key rulings regarding mail-in ballots and the Trump campaign’s efforts to watch Philadelphia polls.
Mail-in ballot signatures
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled counties cannot toss mail-in or absentee ballots based on signature comparisons by county elections officials or employees, or as a result of third-party challenges based on signature analysis and comparisons.
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, asked the high court to take up the issue.
She previously instructed counties not to toss ballots based on a mismatched signature.
A federal judge denied the Trump campaign’s request for signature analyses of mail-in ballots earlier this month.
Republicans argued Boockvar is rewriting existing law and changing guidelines for challenging the validity of a ballot.
Pennsylvania Supreme Court ... by Alex Silverman
Poll watchers
The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania has agreed with a Philadelphia judge’s ruling that satellite voter services offices cannot be forced to allow poll watchers inside.
The Trump campaign appealed that decision, arguing the judge was wrong in determining satellite offices are not polling locations.
Related
However, the Commonwealth Court upheld the lower court’s ruling that satellite offices do not qualify as polling places. It said polling places operate only on Election Day, and employees at satellite offices simply register voters and process and collect mail-ballots. Their duties are “ministerial and not quasi-judicial.”
In a dissenting opinion, Judge Patricia McCullough points to election law, which she said plainly states “a ‘polling place’ … is a location where an elector can go to cast his or her vote in person in a private space, which, undisputedly is what satellite offices offer.”
Pennsylvania Commonwealth C... by Alex Silverman
‘Just cast your ballot’
Boockvar realizes the rulings may be confusing, but she said all voters need to be concerned about is casting a ballot on or before Election Day.
“You don’t actually have to track the litigation at all, just cast your ballot by Tuesday, Nov. 3.”
Pennsylvania has processed more than 2.9 million requests for mail-in ballots — 1.8 million are for Democrats, 740,000 for Republicans, and 330,000 listed as “other.”
So far, about 1.5 million Pennsylvanians have already cast their votes.
“It’s almost exactly the total number of Pennsylvanians who voted by mail in the primary, and we still have 11 days to go,” she added.
Tuesday is the deadline to request a mail-in ballot, but Boockvar said people shouldn’t wait until the deadline.