Last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit upheld a requirement to put correct handwritten dates on outside envelopes of ballots
A federal court ruling has led to mixed reactions from candidates in last year’s tied Towamencin Township election.
Current Supervisor Kofi Osei and former supervisor Rich Marino both shared reactions March 29 to a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling addressing whether undated mail ballots should be counted.
“I think it’s unfortunate that the Third Circuit ruled to uphold the date requirement that serves no purpose in validating the eligibility of a ballot, Osei said. “We shouldn’t be punishing voters for immaterial errors and I will continue to call on the General Assembly to remove this unnecessary barrier.”
Last fall, Osei and Marino squared off in a contentious election race that largely centered around the then-supervisors vote in May 2022 to sell the township’s municipal sewer system, and resident efforts since that sale to try to stop it.
Early results from Election Day in November had Marino winning their race by 18 votes, continued counts by the county narrowed the margin to Marino by five, then four votes, before a federal court ruling in mid-November allowing misdated ballots led to an updated count with both candidates tied.
The two drew lots in a process administered by county officials on Nov. 30, with Osei drawing the winning number, and Marino and his backers subsequently filed a series of challenges to that process ahead of the first supervisors’ meeting of the new year in January, when Osei was sworn in and Marino said he and his supporters would challenge the changing of rules and counting of the six disputed ballots weeks after the election.
Last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit upheld a requirement to put correct handwritten dates on outside envelopes of ballots, according to The Associated Press, which reported that Judge Thomas Ambro said the section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that the lower court relied upon does not pertain to ballot-casting rules broadly, such as dates on envelopes, but “is concerned only with the process of determining a voter’s eligibility to cast a ballot.”
“The Pennsylvania General Assembly has decided that mail-in voters must date the declaration on the return envelope of their ballot to make their vote effective,” Ambro wrote. “The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania unanimously held this ballot-casting rule is mandatory; thus, failure to comply renders a ballot invalid under Pennsylvania law.”
When asked last week about the effects of the ruling locally, Osei said he does “not believe this affects the Towamencin race as I have been serving as Supervisor for a few months now and Rich Marino and his allies did not seek to challenge the counting of the ballots in a proper or timely manner.”
Marino said the saw the ruling differently.
“When the PA Legislature was considering adopting mail-in balloting, they put in place procedures to ensure the integrity of the election and also to make sure the electorate would have confidence in the results of the election,” he said.
“Since then there have been continuous challenges by progressive groups to invalidate these agreed-upon procedures,” Marino continued. “Judge Baxter’s decision changing the rules of the 2023 election after the votes were cast was awful and only served to undermine confidence of our elections.”
“People who voted for my opponent even came up to me and told me the way this transpired was wrong. There were over 1,700 mail-in ballots cast in the Towamencin Supervisor race. Only six were invalidated. A procedure where 99.64 percent of those voting by mail were able to follow correctly hardly seems to be burdensome or unfair,” he said.
What does the ruling mean going forward?
“I view this decision as a first step in undoing an injustice and I am happy the Third Circuit Court of Appeals found in favor of the Towamencin voters who filed this appeal and rejected the idea that procedures put into place to secure election integrity somehow disenfranchises voters that do not follow those procedures. I look forward to continuing this fight,” Marino said.
The commonwealth court challenge filed by Marino’s backers was scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Wednesday.
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