In Lancaster County, where partisanship trumps voter rights, federal ruling on undated and misdated ballots was a relief [editorial]

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THE ISSUE

A federal court last week “directed Pennsylvania counties to accept mail
ballots that a voter has failed to date or misdated, a long-awaited
decision that could affect thousands of ballots in the upcoming 2024
presidential election,” Carter Walker of the nonpartisan news organization
Votebeat reported. “The date a voter writes on the envelope they return a
mail ballot in is ‘immaterial’ to its eligibility, Judge Susan (Paradise)
Baxter of the United States District Court for the Western District of
Pennsylvania ruled. ... Under the materiality provision of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, Baxter said ballots should not be rejected over what
is essentially a technicality that isn’t related to the voter’s
eligibility.” Baxter pointed out that counties know exactly when a
completed mail-in ballot is received by election officials, because a
barcode on the return envelope is scanned to record the return date.

Common sense prevailed in last week’s federal court ruling regarding
undated or incorrectly dated mail-in ballots.

As a result, 285 Lancaster County ballots that otherwise might have been
rejected ended up being counted and accepted as part of the county’s
certified results for the Nov. 7 municipal election.

Earth didn’t fall off its axis. Lancaster city’s Griest Building didn’t
tumble into Penn Square.

If only other minor ballot mistakes could be forgiven in Lancaster County.

As LNP | LancasterOnline’s Tom Lisi reported, the Lancaster County Board
of Elections reported rejecting “36 ballots for lacking a signature, 83
‘naked ballots’ that did not have a required security envelope, and 33
others for having identifying information on the inner secrecy envelope
(the secrecy envelope is meant to ensure a ballot can’t be linked to a
specific voter).”

Some other Pennsylvania counties allow voters to fix minor mistakes on
their mail-in ballots, but not Lancaster County. We find this to be
particularly galling because county officials have repeatedly made
mistakes in overseeing the printing of mail-in ballots.

This year, thousands of county voters received inaccurate mail-in ballot
instructions that directed them to place their completed ballots in “the
white secrecy envelope.”

But the secrecy envelope wasn’t white — it was yellow.

The county elections board offered a remedy, but it was weak tea: Voters
who believed they may have made a mistake caused by the inaccurate
instructions could receive a new ballot, but only if they came to the
Lancaster County Government Center by Nov. 6.

The county decided against sending replacement ballots to the affected
voters — even though county officials clearly failed in the proofreading
and quality control process to spot the erroneous instructions before they
were mailed to voters.

The county elections board is usually comprised of the three county
commissioners. This year, because Republicans Ray D’Agostino and Josh
Parsons were seeking reelection, county Court of Common Pleas Judge
Jeffery Wright and former county solicitor Christina Hausner were
appointed to the board to temporarily replace them.

In April, Hausner rejected a measure proposed by Democratic Commissioner
John Trescot that would have allowed voters to fix minor errors on their
mail-in ballots — a practice known as ballot curing.

D’Agostino and Parsons have adamantly opposed this pro-voter practice.

We can’t know whether the county’s inaccurate instructions caused 83
voters to fail to include the required secrecy envelope, or 33 others to
mistakenly put identifying information on the secrecy envelope.

All we know is that county officials should have extended the same grace
they expected to get after their own screwups to the voters who made minor
mistakes on mail-in ballots.

As the federal judge indicated, a ballot should not be rejected over
technicalities that aren’t related to the voter’s eligibility.

As Votebeat reported, whether counties should count ballots with incorrect
or missing dates has been argued in the courts since Pennsylvania passed
its 2019 no-excuse mail voting law, Act 77, which required that voters
sign and date the mail-in ballot’s outer return envelope.

In a state with a fully functional Legislature, this matter would be
resolved legislatively. Alas, our state Legislature has been useless in
addressing this issue.

So the NAACP Pennsylvania State Conference, the League of Women Voters of
Pennsylvania and other groups last year sued the Pennsylvania Department
of State in federal court to have these ballots counted.

And, of course, Lancaster County filed arguments in opposition.

County Commissioners Parsons and D’Agostino, who were reelected this
month, seem to see everything through a partisan lens. So instead of
fighting for measures such as ballot drop boxes that make voting easier,
and measures that will ensure that all eligible votes are counted, they
reflexively adopt the GOP position, which sadly tends toward restricting
voter rights.

Their hyperpartisanship has negative consequences for Lancaster County
voters, including Republicans.

And their bias against voters keeps revealing itself.

Earlier this month, Judge Wright publicly countered assertions made by
county GOP Chairman Kirk Radanovic and others that he should not have been
appointed temporarily to the county elections board.

Wright and Hausner, both Republicans, were selected for their one-year
terms by county President Judge David Ashworth.

“Judges should keep to the courtroom and leave the politics to the rest of
us,” Radanovic maintained in a text to LNP | LancasterOnline.

Wright correctly pointed out at his last county elections board meeting
that the board “is not and should never be a partisan political board.”

D’Agostino predictably sided with Radanovic.

“As everyone knows, elections are political by nature, and whether people
like it or not, decisions made by members of Boards of Elections are part
of public political discourse,” D’Agostino said in an email to LNP |
LancasterOnline. “A sitting judge should not be put in such a position.”

Ashworth disagreed. The elections board’s sole purpose “is to make sure
that everybody who has a right to vote can do so, and once you start
getting into partisan politics, it defeats the whole purpose of it. It
should not be a partisan position.”

We could not agree more.

D’Agostino and his compatriot Parsons accuse everyone else of being
partisan because they’re so extremely partisan themselves. They’re either
projecting their partisanship onto others — or gaslighting us.

As LNP | LancasterOnline’s Lisi reported, both of the Republican
commissioners “signed a pledge for the election denial group Unite PA last
year, saying no-excuse vote-by-mail has ‘seriously undermined the
integrity of our electoral process.’ ”

Mail-in voting is a secure and trustworthy voting method. And it was
wildly inappropriate for Parsons and D’Agostino — as county elections
board members who will oversee the 2024 elections — to sign that pledge.

It is one more reason we worry that Lancaster County voters will never get
the fair accommodations afforded to voters in other Pennsylvania counties.

https://lancasteronline.com/opinion/editorials/in-lancaster-county-where-
partisanship-trumps-voter-rights-federal-ruling-on-undated-or-misdated-
ballots/article_dd60a6e0-8e4d-11ee-a226-83944052cc95.html