In Pennsylvania, the Election Litigation Continues, With a Twist

As a Senate recount plays out, at least four counties are ignoring an order from the State Supreme Court that undated or misdated mail ballots cannot be counted.

In an election defined in part by a tsunami of litigation before polls even opened, few states saw as much legal haggling over which ballots should count as Pennsylvania.

The polls have long since closed, yet a new round of litigation is flooding the recount battle between Senator Bob Casey, a Democrat, and Dave McCormick, his Republican challenger, who currently leads by around 21,000 votes, a margin rarely overtaken by a simple recount.

The landscape, however, is different. In at least four counties — Bucks, Philadelphia, Centre and Montgomery — local election officials are acting in open defiance of a ruling from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that arrived weeks before the election. The court found that mail ballots that are missing the date on the outer envelope, or have the wrong date, cannot be counted for this election.

The Bucks County election commission felt differently.

“It is a pretty stupid thing to not count someone’s vote simply because they didn’t date an envelope for a ballot,” said Robert Harvie Jr., the chairman of the board and a Democrat, during a meeting on Tuesday where the board voted 2-1 to count 405 ballots with date errors on the envelope. He added that election officials know when ballots were printed for voters, making the outer envelope date requirement meaningless.

“The law needs to be changed,” Mr. Harvie said.