Pennsylvania Judge Ellen Ceisler, a Democrat, has dismissed a case about how counties should handle illegally marked mail-in ballots, saying the Commonwealth Court does not have subject matter jurisdiction over mail-in ballot claims against 67 individual county boards of elections. Republican plaintiffs seeking to stop counties from curing mail-in ballots would have to litigate in each individual county or appeal the jurisdiction issue to a higher court.
The case stems from a passionate statewide dispute over how counties should handle certain mail-in ballots.
In Pennsylvania, state law requires voters to sign and date the outer envelope of their mail-in ballot for it to be counted. Still, many mail-in ballots are returned to the county without a signature or proper date, meaning the ballots are improper and cannot be counted according to state election code….