Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court ruled against Republican efforts to kill the state’s mail-in voting system, ending the lawsuit that focused on one of Donald Trump’s key conspiracy theories in the 2020 election, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports.

More than a dozen Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers joined the suit claiming state courts had usurped the power of the legislature by permitting changes to the state’s mail-in voting procedure during the 2020 election due to the coronavirus pandemic.  This case specifically focused on the court’s decisions to allow jurisdictions to count ballots that did not have the date properly signed on various parts of Pennsylvania’s complicated mail-in ballot, which requires voters to sign and date various parts of the ballot, an interior security envelope and an exterior envelope.  The 24-page opinion notes that while the courts ruled the ballots should be counted, the ruling did not invalidate state law requiring voters handwrite the date on an exterior envelope; instead, it gave local election officials the discretion to accept a ballot they deem valid despite not having the date signed.

Republicans had used this ruling to claim the entire mail-in voting law, passed in 2019, had to be voided because the law includes a provision that the entire law gets scrapped if a court strikes down any provision of the law.  Because the law required a signature on the outside of the envelope and the court ruled the signature unnecessary, Republicans argued unsuccessfully, then the entire law must be struck down.  However, the court pointed out that its ruling was for exceptional cases; it did not strike down the signature requirement.  Republicans vowed to take the case to the state Supreme Court, which has repeated ruled against GOP attempts to handcuff Pennsylvania voters.