January 28, 2022

GOP-Dominated Pennsylvania Court Declares Mail-In Voting Unconstitutional

The ruling will be appealed, but it demonstrates the staying power of Donald Trump’s big lie.

Chester County election workers process mail-in and absentee ballots for the 2020 general election.Matt Slocum/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

A Republican majority on a five-judge panel of Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court declared on Friday that the Keystone State’s widely used vote-by-mail system violates the state’s constitution—the latest fallout from Donald Trump’s endless campaign to undermine the US election system. 

Back in 2019, Pennsylvania’s GOP-controlled state legislature passed Act 77, which made mail-in voting universally available. For awhile, that reform enjoyed bipartisan support. Before Gov. Tom Wolfe, a Democrat, signed the measure into law, Pennsylvania Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, a Republican, praised Act 77 as a worthy “modernization” of the election code. But as Trump repeatedly and falsely asserted throughout 2020 that mail-in voting—which was becoming increasingly popular among Democrats and independents worried about Covid—enabled voter fraud, Republicans began to change their minds.

After Joe Biden won Pennsylvania in November 2020 on the strength of massive mail-in vote turnout, Republicans filed suit in state court, absurdly arguing that 2.6 million mail-in votes cast in the election should be invalidated. It briefly seemed that a Republican judge might take those arguments seriously, but the state Supreme Court quickly stepped in, unanimously tossing out the Republican lawsuit, which, the justices pointed out, hadn’t even been filed until after millions of Pennsylvanians had already cast their ballots. The Trump campaign attempted to get the US Supreme Court to overturn that decision—Ted Cruz even offered to argue the case—but SCOTUS wasn’t interested.

Republican efforts to overturn the 2020 election may have been thwarted, but their war on mail-in voting shows no signs of abating. GOP state representatives soon filed an amended petition arguing that Act 77 is unconstitutional. And today, the Republican majority on the Commonwealth Court, a lower court, announced that it agreed with that petition and struck down the law. 

Trump immediately voiced his delight with the ruling in a statement. “Big news out of Pennsylvania, great patriotic spirit is developing at a level that nobody thought possible,” he said.

However, the ruling might be short lived. The Pennsylvania Department of State issued a statement saying that it plans to appeal the case to the state Supreme Court, which has a 5-to-2 Democratic majority. And while the outcome remains to be seen, the judges on Pennsylvania Supreme Court have proven sympathetic to mail-in voting in the past. 

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate