Ballot ‘Curing’ in Pennsylvania
Counties in Pennsylvania employed inconsistent policies when it came to “curing” ballots — notifying voters of an error in their mail-in ballot so they could fix it. But contrary to claims by the Trump campaign, that inconsistency didn’t fall strictly along party lines.
It wasn’t only Democratic counties that “cured” ballots, as opposed to Republican ones that didn’t. All counties got the same guidance the night before the election instructing them to notify political parties and update the ballot-tracking online system about ballot errors, thus allowing voters to cast a provisional ballot on Election Day.
Some counties notified voters, and some didn’t.
Republicans have lodged several challenges about the so-called “cured” ballots in court, arguing that counties that refused to “cure” ballots were simply following state law and a state Supreme Court ruling that prohibited it. Democrats say the guidance was clear, and perfectly legal.
But even if the courts were to reject cured ballots, election experts say there were too few of them to make much of a dent in Biden’s slim lead in Pennsylvania anyway. Biden led Trump in Pennsylvania by about 60,000 votes, according to vote tallies as of the morning of Nov. 13.
In on Nov. 9, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who also serves as to the Trump campaign, accused Pennsylvania’s Democratic secretary of the commonwealth, Kathy Boockvar, the top election official in the
