Common Cause Massachusetts Celebrates the Appeals Court decision in Moran v. Commonwealth

Today, the Massachusetts Appeals Court upheld a lower court ruling in Moran v. Commonwealth, rejecting a case brought by Republican candidates who lost in the 2020 Massachusetts general election, claiming that ballots cast early and by mail somehow violated the state constitution and should not be counted.   

See the full decision here.

“We hope that this decision marks the end of the partisan-led effort to overturn the 2020 election results,” said Geoff Foster, executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts. “Massachusetts voters deserve to have confidence that our election choices will be honored – even by losing candidates. We appreciate that the Appeals Court has upheld the lower court’s decision.” 

The Appeals Court affirmed the decision in Moran v. Commonwealth on the grounds of mootness as the 2020 election ended long ago and the temporary no-excuse vote-by-mail law has since expired. 

“This lawsuit attempted to disenfranchise more than 1.5 million Massachusetts voters who used early and mail ballots to vote in the 2020 election,” Foster said. “That’s simply inexcusable. Our ‘government by the people’ depends on people being able to cast our ballots and have them counted. The idea that cast ballots could be tossed out after-the-fact should be offensive to every voter in the Commonwealth.”

The Massachusetts House and Senate have both voted to make no-excuse mail voting permanent in Massachusetts and many legal experts agree that the Massachusetts Constitution permits the legislature to do so. 

Common Cause Massachusetts submitted a legal memo on the constitutionality of no-excuse mail voting to the Joint Committee on Election Laws in 2021. That memo can be found here.