PRESS RELEASE: RightCount Co-Chair Lou Barletta Urges Compliance with Pennsylvania Supreme Court Ruling

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 18, 2024

Harrisburg, Pa. — Congressman Lou Barletta, Co-Chair of RightCount Pennsylvania, issued the following statement in response to today’s ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which ordered election officials in multiple Pennsylvania counties to cease counting mail-in ballots with incorrect or missing dates on their outer envelopes.

“Today’s decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is a clear and decisive win for election integrity in our Commonwealth,” said RightCount Co-Chair and former Congressman Lou Barletta. “For months, the rules for mail-in ballots have been explicitly defined, and the Court has once again upheld those rules. Counties like Philadelphia, Bucks, and Montgomery blatantly defied the Court’s orders by counting invalid ballots, undermining public trust in the electoral process. That ends today.”

The ruling comes as counties completed the initial count of ballots, including hundreds of improperly dated or undated mail-in ballots. Despite objections from election integrity advocates on both sides of the aisle and prior guidance from the state’s highest court, boards in several counties voted to include those ballots, arguing the date requirement was a minor technicality.

“The Election Code is not a suggestion; it’s the law,” Barletta added. “The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has made it clear that election officials must abide by the established rules. Any attempt to count invalid ballots is an affront to the integrity of the democratic process and the trust Pennsylvanians place in our elections.”

For more information about RightCount and our efforts to uphold election integrity in Pennsylvania, please visit www.rightcount.org/pennsylvania.

Contact: Vince Galko, vgalko@mercuryllc.com

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