A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that Pennsylvania election officials must count undated or incorrectly dated mail-in ballots, the latest development in the legal wrangling over the state’s voting system.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, a three-judge panel based in Philadelphia, unanimously upheld a lower court’s decision finding that the practice of discarding ballots with date errors violates the Constitution.
Voters are supposed to sign and date the outer envelope included in the mail-in ballot packet. However, thousands of ballots have been disqualified since Pennsylvania introduced no-excuse vote by mail in 2019 because of voters leaving the space blank, filling in their birthday or making some other mistake.
Judge D. Brooks Smith, in a 55-page opinion, said the Third Circuit court weighed the burden the requirement places on voters against the legitimate interest of the state to regulate elections.
While little is being asked of voters, the requirement does not serve any real government purpose, he wrote, echoing arguments made by the City Commissioners and other county election officials for years.
“At the outset, we are simply unable to discern any connection between dating the declaration on return envelopes and detecting and deterring voter fraud,” Smith said in the opinion, rebuffing a key argument in favor of the rule.
Attorneys defending the requirement presented one case of a person voting by mail for a dead family member, where the date on the envelope played a role. Smith said that the fraudulent ballot was also caught by the state’s voting database.
Election boards do not use the date to determine whether the vote arrived on time. Instead, the ballots, which must arrive by 8 p.m. on Election Day, are scanned and dated when received, officials have said.
Under the ruling, a date field may still be printed on the envelope, but election workers cannot set aside ballots with errors, according to the opinion.
About 4,500 mail votes were thrown out in the 2024 general election, down from more than 10,000 in 2022. The improvement is attributed, in part, to a redesigned return envelope.
Republicans appealed the lower court’s ruling, while Democrats, the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Federation of Teachers and other groups advocated in court for the dating requirement to be dropped.
“The RNC and the Republican Party of Pennsylvania are currently evaluating next steps,” a spokesperson for the state GOP said in a statement. “Pennsylvania law is clear: if you vote by mail, you must sign and date your return envelope.
“The liberal groups fighting to overturn this basic protection – which was passed into law by the state’s legislature – are essentially fighting to count illegal ballots. That’s unacceptable.”
GOP attorneys could ask the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the matter.
Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, celebrated the ruling, writing Tuesday on X, formerly Twitter, that “throwing out a qualified voter’s ballot just because they forgot to write a date is disenfranchisement and unconstitutional.
“My team argued in court to ensure meaningless errors shouldn’t cost you your right to vote in Pennsylvania — and today, a federal court ruled in our favor,” he added.
The mail ballot date rule has been subject to extensive litigation. A similar case is currently pending in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, with oral arguments scheduled to take place next month.
Tuesday’s decision comes as President Donald Trump is again targeting voting by mail. He said last week that he intends to “lead a movement” to ban mail ballots for the 2026 mid-term elections, though his authority to do so appears dubious.
A Pew Research Center survey conducted earlier this month found that 58% of Americans support the ability to vote by mail. Views differ sharply along partisan lines, with 83% of Democrats in favor of it compared to only 32% of Republicans.
