Supreme Court seeks Trump administration input on Pennsylvania ballot date rule

The U.S. Supreme Court asked President Donald Trump’s administration for its views on a Republican challenge to Pennsylvania’s mail-ballot date rule. The request did not decide the dispute, but it signaled that the court was seriously weighing whether to hear it.

At issue is a requirement enacted in Act 77 in 2019, when the Pennsylvania General Assembly created no-excuse mail-in voting and required voters to handwrite a date on the outer return envelope. Republicans in Pennsylvania, including state Attorney General David Sunday, want the court to revive the rule after lower courts blocked enforcement on constitutional grounds tied to the right to vote. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court restored the date requirement in 2024, and the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2025 that Pennsylvania could not reject mail ballots solely because they were missing a date or had an incorrect one.

The fight has already ricocheted through the state’s election system. Courts have issued at least nine different rulings on how counties must handle undated or misdated mail ballots, leaving election officials in Harrisburg and county offices to adjust procedures again and again. The Pennsylvania Department of State counts thousands of ballots rejected each election for minor errors, including a missing or incorrect date, a missing signature or failure to use a secrecy envelope. In the November 2024 general election, the department said mail-ballot rejection rates fell 57% from the April primary, after ballot redesigns and voter education efforts. The most common reasons for rejection in the general were late receipt, at 33%, incorrect or missing date, at 23%, lack of signature, at 17%, and lack of a secrecy envelope, at 15%.

State officials also began preprinting the full four-digit year on mail ballot return envelopes to cut down on date mistakes. Those changes helped reduce errors, even as the dispute kept moving through the courts.

Pennsylvania proved decisive in 2024, when Donald Trump won the state after losing it to Joe Biden in 2020. Democratic voters in Pennsylvania have historically used mail ballots more often than Republican voters.