Legal questions about Pennsylvania mail-in ballots loom as voting starts

As voting begins for Pennsylvania’s general election, legal questions about the ballots of mail-in voters remain unresolved in the swing state that could determine the winner of the presidential race.

From what have become known as “undated ballots” to so-called “naked ballots,” the range of issues before state and federal courts center on what to do when voters return absentee ballots on time but don’t follow all of the rules for getting their votes counted.

State law requires completed mail-in ballots to be sent back in two envelopes — an inner secrecy envelope and an outer envelope. On that return envelope, voters have to add their signatures and the current date.

Election officials do not use that handwritten date to verify that a ballot was received by the legal deadline, but thousands of voters in recent elections have had ballots arrive on time but ultimately tossed for failure to properly date their outer envelopes.

Under state law, voters whose mail-in ballots are rejected can vote with a provisional ballot at a polling place. But in one Pennsylvania county, the Republican Party is trying to block the counting of provisional ballots of voters who returned mail-in ballots that were thrown out for not having secrecy envelopes.

Republican groups contend that the ballots of voters who have not followed the rules should not be counted, while voting rights groups have been arguing that state and federal laws protect eligible Pennsylvanians’ votes from getting disenfranchised because of a mistake.

In recent elections, Democrats have outnumbered Republicans in casting mail-in ballots, a method of voting that was opened to all registered voters in Pennsylvania in 2019 with bipartisan support at the time from the state’s