BREAKING: Philadelphia Court REJECTS Republican's latest effort to block mail ballots.
Link to tweet
https://www.democracydocket.com/cases/philadelphia-mail-ballot-intervention/
On behalf of the Philadelphia City Democratic Committee, we intervened in a case brought by the right-wing Public Interest Legal Foundation that sought to invalidate some Philadelphia mail ballots.
order: https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/2020/11/2020-11-02-Order-Denying-Petition-for-Writ-of-Mandamus.pdf
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horray for the courts .
This is like a marathon event...or is it more like a triathlon?... 
Here are the Wards and the 54th is in the lower Northeast of the city -
I looked at the order (and this is from the lowest state court), the plaintiff apparently withdrew his bullshit allegations of "impropriety" and couldn't produce any other justification for the other bullshit claims for his case, so the court denied further action on it (it was apparently an attempt to halt providing replacement ballots, which localities are allowed to do by law, to those whose ballots were never received or were damaged, etc).
And the PA.gov site doesn't make it clear. https://www.pa.gov/guides/voting-and-elections/#VotingbyMailBallot
And, while were on the subject of PA ballots, I wonder why we still need absentee ballots, which require an acceptable "excuse," when we have mail-in ballots, which require no excuse.
(Also, unrelated, but do you know that PennDOT was still charging people for "duplicate" copies of vehicle registration documents, even after they had begun only providing a ,pdf you have to print yourself?)
and both the state and federal courts have weighed in to dismiss the cases.
With respect to "absentee" vs "no excuse absentee", the biggest reason was for when people were literally not able to go to their polling location on election day, so the assumption was that they would have normally gone in person had they been home. I voted absentee the 4 years I was away at UMASS and couldn't vote at my polling place.
The GOP-run legislature actually passed the "no-excuse" absentee option last fall (effective for the spring 2020 primary for the first time), which sure as hell shocked the hell out of me and I jumped on the option right away due to coronavirus... And that same GOP had no problem with their law's language until 45 had a problem with it. 
Am thinking that "no excuse absentee" seemed to be a "compromise term" between "absentee (requiring an excuse)" and full "vote by mail" in the sense that NJ or Oregon or other states have implemented where the state actually mails out ballots to EVERY registered voter without a voter's need to request it (where in PA you have to apply for either type).
And with respect to PennDOT and registrations - I think those charges came about with that big highway infrastructure package (Act 89) that included the increases in the gasoline tax, licenses, registrations, etc. So they are going to get their money no matter how they provide you the document. 
I'm just glad they got rid of the sticker and will let you do 2-year registrations (which is what I did).
And everything you say makes sense to me. Except, the absentee ballot thing is still a bit of a mystery. I often used it in the past because the Rs at my polling place are annoyingly aggressive.
But, once they'd instituted the no-excuse-necessary mail in ballot, I can't see why it matters to have a different ballot just to declare, "I would vote in person if I could, but I can't, so I'm mailing this in because ~insert excuse here~."
My thought was that maybe, if no-excuse mail-in ballots seemed to get too many D votes in, the Rs might want to get rid of it, but would still keep the old "what's your excuse?" absentee mail-in ballots.
As for PennDOT charging for dupe dox--i knew once I'd downloaded the .pdf that I'd just need to save it in a logical place so I could find it in case I ever needed to print a new copy. But I did actually have a tiny little suspicion that they had rigged it somehow to stop me printing more copies! 
because I know for a number of years, I would always bring it up during the telephone town halls that my (D) State Senator would have and he would always seem to throw up his hands regarding any "reform".
What you say makes sense regarding ditching the regular absentees, however the GOP operates on "technicalities" and I don't think they wanted to do any "early voting" (in person or otherwise), but I expect that there may have been some push from their older and rural constituents to offer some kind of "no excuse" mail-in, where a compromise would be to "offer the option" to apply for it but not "assume" and mail a ballot to every household.
Of course back when they drafted and passed this, no one expected this pandemic to come roaring in and then get politicized. 
And with respect to the registrations, I always ordered 3 of them and I last got the heavy paper ones with tear-offs mailed to me last year, so I haven't run into the PDF copy thing since mine are good until 2021... But I have run into that with my car insurance, which was a bug-out, because I have to print it and carefully cut it out to put in my wallet.
the Mango Menace 
for the disaster he is! Nothing would please me more than to see him go down in flames. We shall see...
I'm not really sure what this emoji is, but somehow I'm sure it applies to Pissolini.
You now owe me a new laptop, I just spit orange juice all over my screen laughing.
I am so stealing this.
good ole days when the "Piss Tape" was one of the biggest of his scandals. I still think it's a great name for him.
(Sorry about the OJ incident, though. 😱 )
