State mail-in voting regulation upheld, court docket guidelines towards Republican problem

Voters wait in line to make a correction to their ballots for the midterm elections at Metropolis Corridor in Philadelphia, Monday, Nov. 7, 2022.
AP Photograph/Matt Rourke
By MARC LEVY Related Press
A Pennsylvania state court docket on Tuesday rejected the most recent Republican effort to throw out the presidential battleground state’s broad mail-in voting regulation that has turn into a GOP goal following former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims about election fraud.
It’s the newest of a number of refusals by a state court docket to invalidate Pennsylvania’s 2019 mail-in voting regulation, enacted barely months earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic started and Trump started attacking mail-in voting.
Within the lawsuit filed final 12 months, 14 present and former Republican state lawmakers mentioned the court docket should invalidate the regulation as a result of two earlier court docket choices triggered a provision written that claims the regulation is “void” if any of its necessities are struck down in court docket.
The regulation has a requirement that voters should hand-write a date on the outer envelope of their mail-in poll to ensure that the poll to be counted. The Republicans argued that the 2 earlier court docket choices refused to implement the hand-written date requirement — that means the regulation needs to be thrown out.
However the Commonwealth Court docket, in a 24-page opinion, unanimously discovered that the court docket choices didn’t invalidate “the relationship provision” of the regulation. It dismissed the lawsuit, in favor of Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration and the nationwide and state Democratic events.
Greg Teufel, the lawyer for the 14 Republican lawmakers, mentioned he expects to attraction to the state Supreme Court docket, which has twice upheld the mail-in voting regulation towards earlier Republican-backed challenges.
In an interview, Teufel mentioned he disagreed with the court docket’s rationale, saying that the court docket is ignoring the plain language of the regulation.
“They’re sidestepping a crucial subject, simply pretending they don’t see it,” Teufel mentioned.