A court declared Friday that Pennsylvania’s expansive 2-year-old mail-in voting law violates the state constitution, agreeing with challenges by Republicans who soured on the practice after former President Donald Trump began baselessly attacked it as rife with fraud in his 2020 reelection campaign. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration swiftly appealed to the state Supreme Court, immediately putting the party-line decision by a panel of three Republican and two Democratic judges on hold and stopping it from overturning the law. Still, it throws Pennsylvania’s voting laws into doubt as the presidential battleground state’s voters prepare to elect a new governor and a new U.S. senator in 2022. Just over 2.5 million people voted under the law’s expansion of mail-in voting in 2020′s presidential election, most of them Democrats, out of 6.9 million total cast. Wolf’s office said its appeal means the lower court ruling has no immediate effect, and criticized Republicans as trying to kill the law “in the service of the ‘big lie’” of Trump’s baseless election fraud claims. “We need leaders to support removing more barriers to voting, not trying to silence the people,” Wolf’s office said. Trump and Republicans quickly lauded the decision. “Big news out of Pennsylvania, great patriotic spirit is developing at a level that nobody thought possible. Make America Great Again!” Trump said in a statement through his political action committee. The mail-in voting law has become a hot topic on the campaign trail, with nearly every Republican candidate for governor — including two of three state senators who voted for it — vowing to repeal it. Even Republicans who avoid repeating Trump’s baseless election fraud claims have perpetuated the idea that Democrats cheated in the 2020 presidential election, routinely distorting the actions of state judges and officials as “unconstitutional” or “illegal” in settling legal disputes and questions over the mail-in voting law. In Friday’s decision, the three Republican judges agreed with GOP challengers — including 11 lawmakers who actually voted for the law — and ruled that no-excuse mail-in voting is prohibited under the state constitution, until the constitution is changed to allow it. The two Democrats on the panel dissented. The state Supreme Court — which will hear the appeal — has a 5-2 Democratic majority. Pennsylvania’s attorney general, Josh Shapiro, a Democrat who is running for governor, said he is confident the state Supreme Court will uphold the mail-in voting law as constitutional. He criticized the lower court’s opinion as “based on twisted logic and faulty reasoning” and “wrong on the law.” Ultimately, any decision to throw out the law would not affect the millions of votes already cast under it in the past four elections. In 2019, the Republican-controlled Legislature authorized no-excuse mail-in voting for all voters, expanding upon a provision in the state constitution that required the state to provide the option for voters in specific circumstances. Those circumstances include being out of town on business, illness, physical disability, election day duties or religious observance. Every Republican lawmaker, except one, voted for the legislation in a deal with Wolf, who had sought the mail-in voting provision. In exchange, Wolf agreed to get rid of the straight-ticket voting ballot option that Republicans had sought as a way to protect their suburban candidates from an anti-Trump wave in 2020′s election. The constitution […]

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