Pennsylvania Court Says State’s Mail Voting Law Is Unconstitutional
The decision, which could deal a blow to voting access in a critical battleground state, was immediately appealed.
By
Nick Corasaniti
Published Jan. 28, 2022Updated Jan. 29, 2022
A state court in Pennsylvania on Friday struck down the state’s landmark election law as unconstitutional, dealing a temporary blow to voting access in one of the nation’s most critical battleground states.
In a 3-to-2 decision, the state court sided with 14 Republican lawmakers who sued last year, arguing that the law was unconstitutional. Pennsylvania filed an appeal to its Supreme Court on Friday afternoon, triggering an automatic stay that keeps the law in place during the appeal process.
The law, known as Act 77, was passed by the
by the Republican-controlled legislature and
signed by Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, in 2019. It permitted no-excuse absentee voting, created a permanent mail-in voter list, reduced the voter registration deadline from 30 days to 15 and provided for $90 million in election infrastructure upgrades. It also eliminated straight ticket voting.
The majority opinion, written by Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt, a Republican, said that voting “requires the physical presence of the elector” and ruled that the legislature could not make changes to voting laws without amending the state Constitution.
Democrats in Pennsylvania said they were not surprised that the Commonwealth Court, which they said leans conservative, ruled against the law. They expressed confidence that the appeal to the state Supreme Court, which has sided with the state on voting issues both during and following the 2020 election, would be successful.
In a statement, Josh Shapiro, the Democratic Pennsylvania attorney general who is also running for governor, criticized the state court’s decision as “faulty.”
“This opinion is based on twisted logic and faulty reasoning, and is wrong on the law,” Mr. Shapiro said in a statement.
After what occurred in the 2020 and 2021 elections, I have no confidence in the no-excuse mail in ballot provisions,” said Jake Corman, the top Republican in the State Senate. “There is no doubt that we need a stronger election law than the one we have in place today.”
The bipartisan law was praised by both sides when it was passed, but it became a target of conservatives during the 2020 election, as former President Donald J. Trump unspooled falsehoods and lies about fraud involving mail-in voting. Eleven of the 14 lawmakers who sued to kill the law
voted for it in 2019.
Following the 2020 election, Representative Mike Kelly, a Republican from northwestern Pennsylvania, filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the results in the federal races and claimed that Act 77 was unconstitutional.
But his effort was sternly rebuffed by the state’s Supreme Court, which ruled that the law had been in place for well over a year with no legal challenge until Mr. Trump lost Pennsylvania.
And before voting stopped the mail in ballots came in.
You can say what ever you want . You can laugh and post but you know deep down and it hurts you cause you know the there is no stopping him.
the count before polls closed . Took the democrats weeks to make up for the cheating ..
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