A constitutional claim for clean elections

OPINION:

With a finger tap, Americans can chat with friends almost anywhere on Earth, but they can’t be certain their elections are legit. Technology is useless without integrity, and the process that put President Biden in the White House has been a study in incidents in which the great American ballot has been folded, spindled and mutilated. Fortunately, efforts are underway to fix flawed election procedures in key battleground states, lending hope that the debacle of 2020 will not be repeated.

Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court ruled Friday that Act 77, a 2019 law instituting no-excuse mail-in voting, is unconstitutional. A five-judge panel broke along party lines, with three Republicans voting to strike down the law and two Democrats dissenting.

Based on a common-sense grasp of the commonwealth’s Constitution, the case is open and shut: “The Pennsylvania Constitution requires a qualified elector to present her ballot in person at a designated polling place on Election Day, except where she meets one of the constitutional exceptions for absentee voting,” read the ruling. No-excuse voting by mail, however well-intentioned, is the antithesis of “in-person” balloting. Oops.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, immediately announced an appeal of the ruling to the commonwealth’s Supreme Court, where a 5-2 Democrat majority could void the lower court’s decision and reinstitute the law. The case could eventually wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court — if the justices don’t hide from controversy beneath their bench.

As a Democrat proposal approved by the Keystone State’s Republican-controlled legislature, the law is a blunder that both parties share. Enacted before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rule proved strikingly consequential during the 2020 presidential election when COVID-19 fears prompted 2.5 million Pennsylvanians — primarily Democrats — to vote by mail rather than risk exposure while lined up at polling stations.

Millions of mail-in ballots were cast improperly in the eyes of the Commonwealth Court, but no one should mistake its ruling as a step toward unwinding the 2020 election’s results and tossing winner Mr. Biden from the White House: The petition for redress is directed only at future elections.

Efforts to bring unprecedented election procedures back into compliance with state laws are making headway elsewhere. A Wisconsin judge ruled in January that the state’s election commission issued guidance for the use of ballot drop boxes during the 2020 election, although state statute does not address their use. Until dropbox regulations are established through the normal rule-making process, the boxes are banned, pending appeal.

Georgia is investigating charges of ballot harvesters stuffing drop boxes with ballots they illegally collected during the 2020 election. True the Vote, an election integrity organization, has posted a video of an alleged ballot trafficker photographing a handful of ballots before depositing them in a Gwinnett County dropbox.

Patriots in both major parties want nothing more — and nothing less — than the assurance of clean elections in 2022.