Wednesday’s judgment by the Supreme Court of the United States invalidated the midterm elections in November, precipitating a protracted controversy over mail-in votes. In a ballot issue for a judgeship, the Supreme Court reversed a lower court’s decision and found that undated postal votes should NOT be tallied, siding with a Pennsylvania Republican.
In a nutshell, Democrats want leftist judges to legislate from the bench, circumventing the representation of the American people, who decide the laws through elections.
The Democrats, led by the radical Marc Elias and his organization “Democracy Docket,” have demanded the validation of mail-in ballots that lacked a date and have enlisted activist judges to assist them; the dispute is about the procedure for making legislation.
“The justices vacated the ruling by the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as requested by David Ritter, who lost his 2021 bid for a spot on the Lehigh County Court of Common Pleas to a Democratic rival by five votes after 257 absentee ballots without date notations were counted,” Carmine Sabia wrote for Conservative Brief, adding:
“The high court’s action means that the 3rd Circuit ruling cannot be used as a precedent in the three states covered by this regional federal appellate court – Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware – to allow the counting of ballots with minor flaws such as the voter failing to fill in the date. Vacating the ruling does not change Ritter’s loss in his race.
The 3rd Circuit had ruled that invalidating the un-dated ballots would violate a provision of a landmark 1964 federal law called the Civil Rights Act aimed at ensuring that minor ballot errors do not deny someone the right to vote.”
The state requires that anyone submitting a mail-in ballot “fill out, date and sign” the ballot, but the appeals court ruled that the right to vote superseded those rules, according to the state site on absentee ballots:
“Return your voted ballot to the county election board. Absentee and Mail-in Ballots must be received by 8 pm on election day at your county election board. To ensure your ballot is received by the deadline, return the ballot as soon as possible.”
“We are at a loss to understand how the date on the outside envelope could be material when incorrect dates — including future dates — are allowable but envelopes where the voter simply did not fill in a date are not,” Judge Theodore McKee said in the unanimous decision in May. “Surely, the right to vote is made of sterner stuff than that.”
However, the campaign for Oz submitted a brief in favor of David Ritter’s judicial candidacy. “The Third Circuit’s thinly reasoned and erroneous decision — which addressed a county judicial election conducted more than six months ago — is now being weaponized to undermine the apparent result of a statewide primary election for the Republican nomination to represent Pennsylvania in the United States Senate,” his attorneys said.
Politico reported that in May, a three-judge panel of the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that election officials must count several hundred mail-in ballots received without a date on the envelopes in a timely-received election for county judge.
More on this story via The Republic Brief:
“Look, you have a federal Court of Appeals ruling in unmistakable terms that the date requirement is immaterial,” Adam Bonin, a Democratic election lawyer involved in the case, said.
“This is what the Department of State said: It just has to have a date on it,” he said. “And all the ballots, when they’re received by the counties, they get time-stamped, they get clocked in. So we know that they arrived on time. … So whether or not a voter handwrites in the date, it doesn’t matter at all. And I’m glad that this court recognized it.” CONTINUE READING…