Pennsylvania Court Overturns No-Excuse Mail-In Voting Law (1)

Pennsylvania’s no-excuse vote-by-mail law is unconstitutional, a state appeals court ruled Friday.

The law was enacted with bipartisan support in 2019 to make voting more convenient. The judges ruled that before passing that measure, the state Constitution should have been amended to end a requirement to vote in person.

Such an amendment probably would be approved by voters, President Judge Emerita Mary Hannah Leavitt (R) wrote in the majority opinion.

• Republican lawmakers sued to overturn the law after attacking it in the run-up to the 2020 general election. Former President Donald Trump, who lost that election, issued a statement, according to a spokeswoman who posted on Twitter: “Big news out of Pennsylvania, great patriotic spirit is developing at a level that nobody thought possible.”
• Gov. Tom Wolf’s (D) administration appealed the decision to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Friday afternoon. “The fight’s not over yet, folks,” Common Cause PA said in a brief statement.
• Judge Michael Wojcik (D) concurred in part but dissented from the majority’s opinion that 2019 law violated the Pennsylvania Constitution by adding no-excuse voting by mail. Judge Ellen Ceisler (D) joined Wojcik in his opinion.

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To contact the reporter on this story: Jennifer Kay in Miami at jkay@bloomberglaw.com

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Katherine Rizzo at krizzo@bgov.com; Bennett Roth at broth@bgov.com