Franklin County director of information services Noll Witt loads mail-in and absentee ballots into a DS450 Ballot Scanner at the Franklin County offices in Chambersburg on May 18, the morning after the Pennsylvania primary election. Associated Press

Carolyn Kaster

HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania's top-ranking state elections official said Tuesday a new U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding how rules for the state's mail-in ballots had been applied in a county judge election doesn't change her agency's guidance about counting them.

Acting Secretary of State Leigh M. Chapman said county elections officials should count mail-in votes that arrive in exterior envelopes with inaccurate or nonexistent handwritten dates, despite a requirement in state law.

The U.S. Supreme Court earlier Tuesday had declared as moot a decision in May by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that had said mail-in ballots without a required date on the return envelope had to be counted in a 2021 Pennsylvania judge race.

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