A judge from a state court ruled that Virginian election officials cannot count absentee ballots with missing postmarks if a barcode scan cannot confirm the date of mailing.
The judge on the Virginian state court on Wednesday ruled partially in favor of a conservative legal group that brought the lawsuit challenging a regulation that instructed local election officials to count absentee ballots with missing or illegible postmarks that were received by noon on the Friday after Nov. 3.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of Frederick County Board of Elections member Tom Reed, argued that the regulation was in violation of a state election law issued in 2020 that stipulates any absentee ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 and received by Nov. 6 will be counted. The chairman of the Winchester Republican Committee Robert Hess is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit.
“The existence of a postmark on or before the date of election is an explicit statutory condition precedent for the acceptance of any absentee ballot in Virginia. Defendants have no authority to issue guidance in conflict with explicit state statute on the very matter at issue,” the group wrote in their complaint (pdf).
