Ballot Access News – U.S. Supreme Court Erases Third Circuit Decision on “Materiality” in Determining Whether a Ballot is Valid

Federal voting rights laws have long held that voters cannot be disenfranchised for making a mistake that is not “material”. In other words, if the error made by the voter is merely technical and does not truly pertain to that voter’s ability to cast a vote, the error should not be used to discard the ballot.
On May 27, 2022, the Third Circuit had used that provision of federal law to allow some ballots to be counted in a Pennsylvania local race held in 2021. Even though certain mail-in ballots did not have the “date” blank filled in by the voter, the Court ruled that the ballots should count. All the arriving ballots had been date-stamped by…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2022/10/11/u-s-supreme-court-erases-third-circuit-decisions-on-materiality-in-determining-whether-a-ballot-is-valid/