Penn Capital Star reports –
Fourteen Pennsylvania House Republicans filed a new lawsuit this week alleging that the state’s vote-by-mail law, which was passed with near-unanimous Republican support in 2019, is unconstitutional.
The 34-page suit filed in Commonwealth Court on Tuesday night asks for the state court to declare the law unconstitutional, and prevent the state from issuing mail-in ballots to Pennsylvanians who do not have a work, health, or religious excuse for not voting in-person in upcoming elections.
The law, Act 77, allows all Pennsylvanians to request and to return, a mail-in ballot with no excuse. It was heavily used in the 2020 presidential election amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Eleven of the 14 House GOP lawmakers who filed the suit voted for the law. Two were not in the General Assembly at the time. And one, state Rep. David Zimmerman, R-Lancaster, voted against it.
When ACT 77 passed in 2019, it was the result of a compromise between Republicans and Democrats. In addition to enabling “No-Fault” Mail-in voting in Pennsylvania (what Democrats got in the compromise), ACT 77 also did away with straight-party voting (what Republicans got in the compromise).
Some believe that the ticket-splitting in Pennsylvania in 2020 that enabled Republicans Stacy Garrity and Timothy DeFoor to get elected as Treasurer and Auditor General, was a direct result of ACT 77.