by Peter Hall, Pennsylvania Capital-Star
Two state lawmakers have filed an appeal in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court after a lower court threw out their lawsuit, arguing that absentee ballots must be counted at the polling places where voters would normally cast ballots rather than at county election offices.
(Getty Images)
The lawsuit, filed in January on behalf of state Reps. Kathy Rapp (R-Warren) and David Zimmerman (R-Lancaster), sought a court order declaring that sections of the Pennsylvania Election Code and the guidance of the Department of State violates the state constitution.
The suit named as defendants Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt and all 67 county boards of elections.
In a decision Friday, Commonwealth Court Judge President Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer granted requests by Schmidt and the county boards to dismiss the case, writing that the court was bound by a nearly 60-year-old state Supreme Court decision.
Attorney Greg Tuefel, who represents Rapp and Zimmerman, said he filed the appeal Monday and the Supreme Court has indicated that it would hear the case quickly to resolve it before the November election.
Rapp and Zimmerman’s lawsuit contended that sections of the Election Code requiring absentee ballots to be returned to and counted by county Boards of Elections are at odds with the Constitution’s requirement that they be returned to and counted in the precincts where a voter resides.
Tuefel said Rapp and Zimmerman believe that counting absentee ballots at the polling places where an absentee voter resides is better for election security. It would be virtually impossible for a person who wishes to commit election fraud to obtain the cooperation of election officials in multiple precincts and those who work at the polls and know the voters are in a better position to spot fraud or irregularities in absentee ballots.
In her opinion for the court, Cohn Jubelirer wrote that the Supreme Court in 1968 analyzed the Election Code sections and the Constitutional provision and concluded that the Constitution requires “the return and canvass of [electors’] votes,” not ballots, “in the election district in which they respectively reside.”
Cohn Jubelirer noted that the Supreme Court in 1968 recognized the same arguments raised by Schmidt and the county boards of elections in response to Rapp and Zimmerman that requiring absentee ballots to be returned to polling places would be costly and a logistical nightmare.
In his brief opposing the lawmakers’ claims, Schmidt noted that they had failed to explain how having absentee ballots counted in dozens of individual polling places would benefit candidates.
“To the contrary, Petitioners do not dispute — and therefore concede — that their requested relief would require them to expend more time and resources since they would have to send observers to dozens of polling places instead of to the boards of elections offices for Berks, Lancaster, Warren, Forest, and Crawford Counties,” the brief said.
The Department of State did not respond to a request for comment by the deadline for this article.
(This article was updated at 2:45 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2024, to include comments from Tuefel.)
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