A Pennsylvania county violated the law by refusing to tell voters if their ballot was rejected, a judge says

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A Republican-controlled county in Pennsylvania violated state law when poll workers refused to tell voters that their absentee ballots had been rejected and would not be counted in last April’s primary election, a judge ruled.

As a result, voters in Washington County were unable to exercise their legal right to challenge the county’s election board’s decision or to cast a provisional vote in place of rejected absentee ballots, the judge said.

The decision is one of several election-related lawsuits being heard in Pennsylvania state courts, a hotly contested battleground in November’s presidential election where the race between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris could be a close one.

“This is a great day for voters in Washington County,” David Gatling Sr., president of the Washington, Pennsylvania branch of the NAACP, said in a statement Monday.

The NAACP branch sued the county earlier this summer, as did seven voters whose ballots were rejected in the April 23 primary and the Center for Coalfield Justice. The two accused Washington County of violating voters’ constitutional rights to due process by intentionally concealing whether their ballots had been counted.

In his ruling Friday, Judge Brandon Neuman ordered Washington County to notify any voter whose mail-in ballot is rejected due to an error – such as a missing signature or handwritten date – so the voter has a chance to challenge the decision.

Neuman, who was elected as a Democrat, also ordered the county to allow voters to cast a provisional ballot to ensure their vote was counted.

In the primary, the county rejected 259 absentee ballots received before polls closed, or 2% of all absentee ballots received on time, the judge wrote. About three-quarters of Pennsylvania’s absentee ballots are from Democrats, perhaps because Trump spent years baselessly claiming there was a lot of fraud in mail-in voting.

Nick Sherman, chairman of the Washington County Commission, said he and other county officials have not yet decided whether to appeal. But Sherman said he believes the county’s actions are consistent with state law.

Sherman pointed out that Neuman is a Democrat and called him a prime example of a judge who “legislates from the bench.”

“I wonder how you can read such a black-and-white law and then make such a decision,” Sherman said in an interview.

Sherman said state law does not allow the county to begin processing absentee ballots – known as the primary – before 7 a.m. on Election Day.

However, Witold Walczak, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, which represented the plaintiffs, said county poll workers could immediately tell if a mail-in ballot that had just arrived contained errors that would lead to its disqualification.

Most counties check for such errors and notify voters immediately or enter the ballot’s status into the state’s voter database, Walczak said. This alerts a voter that their ballot was rejected so they can make sure their vote counts, Walczak said.

None of this is a pre-election campaign assessment, said Walczak.

“The precount is about opening the (ballot) envelopes,” Walczak said. “That’s not the case here. And if Sherman is right, then 80% of the precincts are doing it wrong.”

Follow Marc Levy at https://x.com/timelywriter.