Ball v. Chapman

Pennsylvania law requires voters voting an absentee or mail-in ballots to sign and date a declaration on the return envelope. On October 16, 2022, the Republican Party of Pennsylvania, Republican National Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee, and several Pennsylvania voters filed a lawsuit in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, asserting that new guidance by the Secretary of the Commonwealth allowing counties to count undated or incorrectly dated mail and absentee ballots received before the deadline was illegal under state law. The petitioners requested that the court declare the dating requirement as mandatory and that county election officials separate any undated or incorrectly dated mail or absentee ballots from the other ballots they received.  

On October 19, 2022, the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania (LWVPA), Philadelphians Organized to Witness, Empower and Rebuild (POWER), Common Cause Pennsylvania, Black Political Empowerment Project, the NAACP Pennsylvania State Conference, and Make the Road Pennsylvania moved to intervene on behalf of voters in the case. The motion argued that petitioners’ requested relief would disenfranchise thousands of voters, burden the organizations’ voter education and turnout efforts, and would violate federal law, including the Materiality Provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

On October 21, 2022, the court rejected the motion to intervene brought by the League and its partners. However, the court allowed them to file an amicus brief, which was filed on October 25, 2022. 

On November 1, 2022, the court issued an opinion forbidding county election boards from counting any absentee and mail-in ballots with incorrect or missing dates on the return envelopes. The court also directed the election boards to separate and preserve these ballots from the other ballots they received. The court was evenly divided on whether not counting these ballots would violate the Materiality Provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In a further supplemental order issued on November 5, 2022, the court defined incorrectly dated outer envelopes as, “(1) mail-in ballot outer envelopes with dates that fall outside the date range of September 19, 2022, through November 8, 2022; and (2) absentee ballot outer envelopes with dates that fall outside the date range of August 30, 2022, through November 8, 2022.” 

On February 8, 2023, the court issued an opinion detailing its reasoning behind the order issued on November 1, 2022. The court ruled that failing to date the return envelope on an absentee ballot invalidates it under Pennsylvania state law and that county boards of elections may decide how to evaluate incorrectly dated ballots based on its previous orders for the 2022 election. The court was again evenly divided on whether failing to count such ballots would violate the Materiality Provision of the Civil Rights Act. A majority of justices suggested they agreed with a Third Circuit Court of Appeals decision that stated not counting such ballots if they were timely received would violate the Civil Rights Act. However, this decision was later vacated by the Supreme Court for mootness.   

Because of the Pennsylvania supreme court’s ruling, the state’s voters are required to correctly date the return envelopes for their absentee ballots. Failure to do so could potentially cause their ballot to not be counted. 

LWVPA was represented in this matter by the ACLU of Pennsylvania.