This database consolidates and tracks litigation concerning the effect of the pandemic on election law. The purpose of this tool is to provide an interactive list of relevant cases that can be searched by issue, court, status, and jurisdiction.
Case Details
In re: Canvass of Absentee and Mail-In Ballots of November 3, 2020 General Election V
Closed
In re: Canvass of Absentee and Mail-In Ballots of November 3, 2020 General Election, No. 20110898 (Penn. Ct. Common Pleas, Philadelphia Cnty.) |
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| Case Summary | Petitioner, the Trump campaign, seeks to overturn the decision of the Philadelphia County Board of Elections to count 4,466 ballots where the voters signed and dated but did not print their name and street address. | |
| Filed | 11/10/2020 | |
| State | Pennsylvania | |
| Type of Court | State | |
| Status | Closed | |
| Last Updated | 03/13/2021 | |
| Issue Tag(s) | Vote-by-Mail (Other Vote-by-Mail Issue) Missing ballot information |
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| Complaint(s) | 11/10/2020: Complaint filed. | |
| Dispositive Ruling(s) | 11/13/2020: Order/Ruling, The court held that petitioner is not alleging fraud but conducting an eligibility challenge. The Election Code does not require that the outer envelope have a date, the elector’s printed name, and address. In fact, the preprinted ballots already contain the elector’s name and address. The Philadelphia County Board of Elections decision to count the 4,460 ballots is affirmed. | |
In re: Canvass of Absentee and Mail-In Ballots of November 3, 2020 General Election, No. 35 EAP 2020 |
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| Case Summary | After the court of common pleas issued its five decisions over the Board of Election's decisions to count batches of ballots, the Board moved to transfer the appeals directly to the Supreme Court. The court considered whether the Election Code requires a county board of elections to disqualify mail-in or absentee ballots submitted by qualified electors who signed the declaration on their ballot’s outer envelope but did not handwrite their name, their address, and/or a date, where no fraud or irregularity has been alleged. | |
| Filed | 11/18/2020 | |
| State | Pennsylvania | |
| Type of Court | State | |
| Status | Closed | |
| Last Updated | 03/13/2021 | |
| Issue Tag(s) | Vote-by-Mail (Other Vote-by-Mail Issue) Missing ballot information |
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| Dispositive Ruling(s) | 11/15/2020: Appellant Brief | |
| 11/23/2020: Order/Ruling, The Pennsylvania Supreme Court consolidated all five cases and issued a single opinion on them. The Supreme Court held that the Election Code does not require boards of elections to disqualify mail-in or absentee ballots submitted by qualified electors who signed the declaration on their ballot’s outer envelope but did not handwrite their name, their address, and/or date, where no fraud or irregularity has been alleged. The court affirmed the lower courts' decisions to count the ballots, on the basis that the Code's directives in question are not mandatory and Pennsylvania jurisprudence has long held that courts must construe the law to save, not void, ballots. | ||
