Pennsylvania county broke law by refusing to tell voters if it rejected their ballot, judge says

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A Republican-controlled county in Pennsylvania violated state law when election workers refused to tell voters that their mail-in ballot had been rejected and wouldn’t 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 either to challenge the decision of the county elections board or to cast a provisional ballot in place of the rejected mail-in ballot, the judge said.

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

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

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

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