Dauphin County announces plan to let voters fix mail-in ballot mistakes
Dauphin County’s elections board announced that it will be returning incorrectly-completed mail-in ballots to voters in order to give them a chance to fix potentially disenfranchising errors.
The county board said Wednesday it had approved a plan for elections staff to mail ballots back to voters in cases where they did not sign the return envelope, or failed to use the additional secrecy envelope.
The county’s announcement addresses an ongoing issue with Act 77 of 2019, which expanded Pennsylvania’s vote-by-mail law. Act 77 states that voters should sign and date their outer return envelope, and place their ballot in an inner secrecy envelope.
In the election cycles since the law went into effect, there has been a considerable amount of litigation over whether mail-in ballots can be disqualified under voting-rights laws solely for lack of a signature and date or secrecy envelope.
Courts have also heard arguments over whether counties are allowed or obligated to notify voters that they made such errors, and allow them to correct their ballots prior to election day, a process referred to as “ballot curing.”
Dauphin County will now be mailing such ballots back to voters with new envelopes and instructions.
“Voters will be guided to repackage their ballot using the new envelopes and to complete the voter declaration by signing and dating the return envelope,” the elections board said in a release. “This initiative aims to help voters correct simple errors and ensures that their votes are counted in the upcoming November 5, 2024 election.”
The county will not return ballots to voters if they only failed to date the envelope, given a state court ruling two weeks ago determining that such mistakes are immaterial and that undated ballots must still be counted.
“Our view is those are legitimate ballots and are to be counted normally, therefore there’s nothing to cure,” county elections director Chris Spackman said of undated ballots.
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