The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected an appeal from left-wing organizations to reconsider a ruling that found it incorrect to accept thousands of undated or wrongly dated ballots during the 2020 election. The court upheld a state law in a 2-1 decision, stating that any mail-in ballots that arrive in envelopes missing a date or with an incorrect date are invalid. This decision overturns a lower court’s ruling.

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Pennsylvania had adopted universal mail-in balloting in 2019, requiring voters to fill out, date, and sign the declaration printed on the envelope before returning their ballot. However, thousands of ballots mailed in during the 2020 presidential election and 2022 midterms did not comply with this date requirement.

Previously, a panel of judges had ruled that the date requirement violated the Materiality Provision of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but this decision was later vacated after the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Ritter v. Migliori. The issue then went to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, where the judges ruled the ballots were invalid under state law and should not be counted.

Left-wing groups filed a suit last year, resulting in U.S. District Judge Susan Paradise Baxter ruling that ballots with missing or incorrect dates should be counted if they are received by Election Day. This decision was appealed by Republican organizations and overturned by the 3rd Circuit panel. The panel clarified that the Materiality Provision only applies when determining who may vote, not how a qualified voter must cast a ballot for it to be counted.

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