Oct 1, 2025 By Mike Jones 6 min read

If a voter forgets to sign the return envelope for their mail-in ballot, they’ll receive an automated email from the state’s electoral database system informing them of that specific error and giving instructions on how to vote using a provisional ballot on Election Day.

While many counties across Pennsylvania have used various “notice and cure” procedures to help voters correct defective mail-in ballots – and some have refused ballot-curing options at all – the state Supreme Court seemingly settled the issue last Friday with its ruling on how election offices must handle such situations.

The 4-3 majority opinion from the high court affirmed the August 2024 ruling by Washington County Court of Common Pleas Judge Brandon Neuman that voters who make disqualifying errors on their mail-in ballots should be notified in some form and given the chance to vote with a provisional ballot on Election Day as a backstop.

Seven voters in Washington County sued the county’s elections board over its refusal to offer a “notice and cure” procedure for the April 2024 primary election, meaning 259 people who either failed to sign or date their mail-in ballots had their votes thrown out since they did not comply with election law.

That lawsuit became a proxy war in the ongoing ballot-curing issue, with the ACLU of Pennsylvania, Center for Coalfield Justice, Public Interest Law Center and Washington NAACP representing the seven voters and the Republican Party of Pennsylvania and Republican National Convention intervening on behalf of the county.

Neuman and the state Supreme Court seemingly threaded the needle on the issue by utilizing Pennsylvania’s Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors, or SURE system, to notify voters of issues with specific information on the errors and how to vote with a provisional ballot.

Since no excuse mail voting became law through Act 77 in 2019, people who apply and send in their mail-in ballots receive automatically generated emails through the SURE system alerting them their ballot has been sent, returned and recorded. But ambiguity in the way Washington County denoted ballots with disqualifying errors as “Record – Ballot Returned” made it appear as though their votes were being counted when they weren’t, with no options for voters to fix the problems. Neuman’s order last year required Washington County’s elections staff to contact voters by phone to inform them of the problem while correctly marking their information in the SURE system.

But since that time, the state Department of State has worked closely with all 67 elections offices to add a menu of dropdown tabs to give a variety of options on how to categorize disqualifying errors with mail-in ballots, such as those that are missing signatures or “naked ballots” that are not in privacy envelopes. The state Supreme Court noted in the majority opinion that those updates were helpful in its decision to rely on the SURE system for notification.

“The Shapiro Administration has worked tirelessly to enfranchise eligible voters and make Pennsylvania’s elections accessible for every qualified voter,” said Amy Gulli, who is a spokeswoman with the Department of State. “The Department has worked with all 67 counties to ensure that the SURE system provides them the ability to email voters regarding the status of their ballot and has always encouraged counties to use these codes in order to provide voters with accurate information regarding their mail ballot status.”

Those newly expanded codes range from being received and recorded to more nuanced descriptions explaining to voters that their mail-in ballot has been “canceled” due to a missing signature or not having the privacy envelope, among other scenarios. The high court’s ruling to use SURE as the notification and allow people to vote provisionally is merely a baseline of what counties can do since many others might still offer “notice and cure” options.

“The decision last week underscores the importance of that work, and the Department is pleased that the Supreme Court has confirmed that voters should not be misled when attempting to exercise their right to vote,” Gulli said.

But there were some questions about the Supreme Court’s ruling, including in Washington County where the case originated. County solicitor Gary Sweat told the commissioners during their Tuesday morning agenda meeting that he had questions whether the SURE system was adequately equipped to handle all scenarios where mail-in ballots might be disqualified.

After the meeting, Sweat made the short walk to the county elections bureau on the ground floor of the Crossroads Center building in Washington to meet with Elections Director Melanie Ostrander in her office. While there, Ostrander walked Sweat through the menu of options and how the elections workers will review each mail-in ballot and then scan the envelope’s bar code into the system before clicking the correct code to inform voters if the ballot has been accepted or if it is missing a key component, such as a signature.

Without doing anything else, the SURE system will then send an email to the voter – if they included an email address when applying for the ballot – informing them of their vote’s status and telling them how to vote with a provisional ballot on Election Day if there is an error. Similar information can be located by the state Department of State’s elections website if a voter looks up his or her ballot status.

“I’m satisfied that the SURE system has sufficient dropdown options that would allow the elections (staff) to identify the exact defect with the mail-in ballots to reject the ballot,” Sweat said after the meeting.

However, Sweat noted that not everyone has access to the internet or an email address, which could make the process uneven for some people. Sweat said he suspects the state will come out with guidelines on how to handle such circumstances, and a paper letter might ultimately be sent to people with mail-in ballot errors.

“We’re going to get some guidance,” Sweat said about what they expect to be coming from the state ahead of next month’s general election.

Unlike in the past, mail-in ballot envelopes with incorrect or missing dates will not be disqualified in Pennsylvania following an August ruling by the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals, although that decision is being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

For now, only mail-in ballot envelopes that are missing signatures will be disqualified, and there were only 37 examples of those in Washington County out of 7,850 mail-in votes that were received in the May primary. As of Tuesday, voters in Washington County have applied for 13,768 mail-in ballots – which will be sent out beginning late next week – for the Nov. 4 election.