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HARRISBURG &mdash; Pennsylvania&rsquo;s top election official has asked the state&rsquo;s highest court to back her up in a new legal dispute with President Donald Trump&rsquo;s campaign over whether counties should count mail-in ballots when a voter&rsquo;s signature doesn&rsquo;t necessarily match the one on their registration.
				The filing, at midnight Sunday by Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, comes several days after Trump&rsquo;s campaign raised the matter in its wider, election-related federal court case in the presidential battleground state.
				In guidance last month to counties, Boockvar told them that state law does not require or permit them to reject a mail-in ballot solely over a perceived signature inconsistency.
				In her court filing, Boockvar asked the state Supreme Court to make that clear, and make it clear that a third party &mdash; like a presidential campaign or political party &mdash; is not permitted by the law to challenge ballots based on their signature analysis.
				Such rejections poses &ldquo;a grave risk of disenfranchisement on an arbitrary and wholly subjective basis,&rdquo; Boockvar&rsquo;s filing said, and without any opportunity for a voter to answer questions about the signature before the ballot could be thrown out.
				Her guidance to counties comes amid a surge in mail-in voting and rising concerns that tens of thousands of mail-in ballots will be discarded in the presidential election over a variety of technicalities.
				The fight over signatures is one of many partisan battles being fought in the state Legislature and the courts over mail-in voting in Pennsylvania, amid concerns that a presidential election result will hang in limbo for days on a drawn-out vote count in Pennsylvania.
				County election officials say people&rsquo;s signatures change over time, with age or medical conditions. They also say questions about whether a voter&rsquo;s signature is valid have historically been extremely rare and, because of that, there has never before been a debate about it.
				&ldquo;It was really low on the list of concerns for mail ballots, absolutely,&rdquo; said Jeff Greenburg, the former Mercer County elections director who now works for the National Vote at Home Institute. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t have a number, but I would venture to say that the number of ballots turned away due to a signature question was slim to none. I&rsquo;m sure it wasn&rsquo;t none, but it was infinitesimal.&rdquo;
				But in the Nov. 3 presidential election, Pennsylvania is bracing to receive more than 3 million mail-in ballots, many of them from people who have never voted by mail before. That figure is more than 10 times the number of mail-in received in 2016&rsquo;s presidential election, fueled by a year-old law vastly expanding mail-in voting and concerns over voting in person during the pandemic.
				In federal court, Trump&rsquo;s campaign has asked a judge to declare that Boockvar&rsquo;s guidance is unconstitutional and to block counties from following that guidance.
				The Trump campaign argues that the law is clear that election officials must compare the information on the mail-in ballot envelope, including a voter&rsquo;s signature, to a voter&rsquo;s information on file to determine a person&rsquo;s qualifications to vote.
				&ldquo;The mandatory language of these provisions makes clear that the consequence of a failure to verify a voter&rsquo;s qualification through signature comparison is the denial of that application and the setting aside of that elector&rsquo;s voted ballot,&rdquo; the Trump campaign wrote in its filing Tuesday in federal court.
				The judge in that case may rule any day.
				In that case, Trump&rsquo;s campaign is also trying to remove a county residency requirement on certified poll watchers and ban counties from using drop boxes or mobile sites to collect mail-in ballots that are not &ldquo;staffed, secured, and employed consistently within and across all 67 of Pennsylvania&rsquo;s counties.&rdquo;
				Trump&rsquo;s campaign is also suing Philadelphia over city officials preventing campaign representatives from watching people registering to vote or filling out mail-in ballots in election offices there, while state Republican lawmakers have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block on a ruling in the state&rsquo;s court that extends the deadline in November&rsquo;s election to receive and count mailed-in ballots.

Court battle erupts over voters’ signatures on mail ballots