Karen Stoehr

State College

In county after county, the Pennsylvania Republican Party, aided and abetted by State Senator Cris Dush, is feigning outrage because a small number of voters–including military members overseas–transposed the date on the outside envelope of their mail-in ballots.

The requirement to date the outside envelope was sure to trip up a small number of voters–and since more Democrats than Republicans use mail-in voting, well, you guessed it, more Democratic votes will be discarded.

Mission accomplished.

The pointless requirement is a modern-day version of literacy tests for black voters–an underhanded way of disenfranchising some voters under the guise of safeguarding the vote.

What legitimate purpose does the date serve? Afterall, voters who requested mail-in ballots received them on or after March 30. The primary election was April 23. Thus, it was impossible for anyone who used a mail-in ballot to vote before or after those dates.

But the Republicans are suing, saying that a mistake in the date written on a mail-in ballot envelope should somehow disqualify that ballot.

Dush claims that it’s the principle of the thing that ballots with incomplete or wrong dates be tossed out.

If Dush was the principled State Senator he wants us to believe he is, he’d be facilitating voting, not setting silly “gotcha” traps that have nothing to do with election security.

You can bet that if Republicans used mail-in ballots at the same rate as Democrats, they’d never raise this issue again.