From Spotlight PA (https://www.spotlightpa.org/):
In a pair of potentially seismic election year cases, Commonwealth Court threw out Pennsylvania’s expanded mail voting law on Friday and continued weighing its choices for the state’s next congressional map.
The GOP-led court tossed the mail voting law, known as Act 77, after a challenge brought by Republicans, but the law remains in place as the Wolf administration pursues an appeal to the Democrat-led state Supreme Court.
Without a constitutional amendment updating ground rules for Pennsylvania elections, three of five Commonwealth Court judges — all Republicans — said the state’s no-excuse mail voting law failed to pass legal muster.
Spotlight PA explains the ruling, how it might affect voters like you, and why GOP lawmakers challenged a law that many of them helped pass.
MAP DECISION: The court is also set to choose Pennsylvania’s new congressional map after Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed a proposal passed by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature last week.
The court is weighing more than a dozen options submitted by GOP lawmakers, Democratic lawmakers, the governor, citizens groups, good-government groups, voters, and more. Spotlight PA has an easy-to-use guide here.
Much like Friday’s mail-voting decision, an appeal of the court’s eventual map selection is also likely to head to the state’s Democrat-majority high court.
But with time rapidly fading before May’s primary, one group of plaintiffs wants the Supreme Court involved sooner rather than later.
WATCH: A panel on the Pa. legislature’s 2022 agenda and what’s at stake
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