Penn. Supreme Court: signatures don't have to match for vote to count
The Trump campaign had challenged an apparent loophole in the law.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFMail-in ballots are processed and counted for the upcoming presidential election in Denver, Colorado, U.S., October 22, 2020.(photo credit: KEVIN MOHATT/REUTERS)
Pennsylvania's Supreme Court has ruled that mail in ballots must be accepted by election officials, even if the signature doesn't match that on file for the voter, The Washington Times has reported.Pennsylvania state laws, which have been expanded over the last two years, extending mail voting options, ask voters to sign their mail-in ballots. However, the decision was made as the justices found nothing in the state's legislation saying that the signature must be verified, meaning that if election officials accept the vote save the signature, it must be counted.“We, therefore, grant the Secretary’s petition for declarative relief, and direct the county boards of elections not to reject absentee or mail-in ballots for counting, computing, and tallying based on signature comparisons conducted by county election officials or employees, or as the result of third- party challenges based on such comparisons,” the court wrote in its opinion.US President Donald Trump's election campaign had challenged the state on the matter, alongside similar cases in Wisconsin and other key states. The campaign had also requested that Pennsylvania discount any votes not mailed back inside state-mandated secrecy envelopes, and for poll watchers to be barred from attending monitoring sites outside the county in which they are registered to vote.Signature matching is widely considered a key check in many states, with election officials given training on how to spot a fake.
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