Guest Editorial: Keep Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting law

The encouraging news is that for now Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting law will remain in place, at least for the near future.

This despite a state judge’s order that would have made it expire this month, the state Supreme Court ruled March 1.

The justices issued a one-paragraph order that overturned a Feb. 16 decision by Commonwealth Court Senior Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt that would have ended the state’s 2-year-old voting law.

The Supreme Court plans to hold oral arguments regarding the legal challenge of the law.

The justices’ decision to invalidate Leavitt’s order gives themselves more time to rule without facing a one-week deadline.

They said the law will remain in place, pending further action by the high court.

The administration of Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf is right to ask the Supreme Court to keep the law intact during the litigation, arguing that stopping mail-in voting ahead of the spring primary season “would, if anything, only exacerbate voter confusion and the danger of disenfranchisement.”

Pennsylvania ended most restrictions against mail-in voting in 2019 as part of a deal in which Republican legislative leaders obtained an end to straight-ticket voting.

Democrats have used the mail-in option far more than have Republicans during the pandemic. Many of the Republicans in the General Assembly who voted for mail-in voting the 2019 now oppose it, including 11 of the plaintiffs in the current legal challenge.

Leavitt and two fellow Republican judges ruled in January that no-excuse mail-in voting is prohibited under the Pennsylvania Constitution. Two Democrats dissented, saying the constitution permits no excuse under a provision that says elections “shall be by ballot or by such other method as may be prescribed by law.”

Lawyers for the Department of State and Acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman argued in a filing that eliminating mail-in voting ahead of the spring primary season “would, if anything, only exacerbate voter confusion and the danger of disenfranchisement.”

The state’s vote-by-mail law was passed with near-unanimous Republican support in 2019.

The legislation proved to be effective in allowing more people to vote amid a global pandemic. Just over 2.5 million people voted under the law in 2020’s presidential election, most of them Democrats, out of 6.9 million total cast.

The large number of Democrats who mailed in their votes is why Republican state legislators are now challenging the law.

Republicans began opposing mail-in voting last year after former President Donald Trump began baselessly attacking it as rife with fraud and, later, claiming without evidence that the election was stolen from him in critical battleground states including Pennsylvania.

The mail-in voting option is working.

Nearly 5 million votes were cast by mail over 2020-21. As of August, nearly 1.4 million Pennsylvania voters were signed up for permanent mail-in voting notification.

(Reprinted from the Philadelphia Tribune)

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