PA Naked Ballot Problem

If you’re Voting-by-Mail in Pennsylvania this year, and you want your Vote to actually Count, you need to remember one crucial thing: the Secrecy Envelope.

Once you Fill-Out the Ballot itself, you must Place it Inside the provided Secrecy Envelope, which contains No Information about your Identity. Then you put the Sealed Secrecy Envelope inside a Different Postage-Paid Addressed Return Envelope, on which you have to Sign your Name and Write your Address.

If you Forget the Secrecy Envelope, simply Dropping your Ballot in the Return Envelope, your Ballot will be deemed a “Naked Ballot”, and according to a recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court Ruling, Election Officials will have to Throw It Out.

The Reason for the Secrecy Envelope, in theory, is to Preserve the Secret Ballot and to Prevent Fraud. That is: Once Election Officials Receive the Mail-in-Ballot, they use the Outer Envelope to Verify that the Person Voting is Registered and hasn’t already Voted, without being able to see who the Vote is for. Only Later will the Secrecy Envelope actually be Opened and Counted.

But the Risk is that if the Rule is Implemented Strictly, many Voters’ Non-Fraudulent Ballots will be Thrown-Out on what’s essentially a Technicality, simply because they Misunderstood the Rules.

So in the Wake of the State Supreme Court Ruling, Democrats are Calling on the Republican-Controlled State Legislature to Change the Law to allow Naked Ballots to be Counted. Yet GOP Legislators do Not seem eager to take any such step. Both Sides suspect Discarding Naked Ballots will Disadvantage Democrats more than Republicans, since more Biden Supporters have told Pollsters they are interested in Voting-by-Mail. And this could Potentially be very Consequential. A Philadelphia Official recently raised Concerns that as many as 100,000 “naked ballots” could be Thrown-Out, and pointed out that Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 by just 44,000 Votes.

This time around,Ppolls and Models show Pennsylvania has a relatively high chance of being the “Tipping Point” State likely to put Trump or Biden over 270 Electoral Votes. And Dave Wasserman, an Elections Expert for the Cook Political Report, asserted that we “know” that Pennsylvania’s “rejected ballots will be Heavily Pro-Biden.” Current Polls suggest Biden’s Lead is probably big enough in enough States that he can Overcome this Problem, but if Polls are Underestimating Trump’s Support or if the Race Tightens, the Fate of Naked Ballots very well could decide the Presidency.

Last year, well before the Covid-19 Pandemic, Pennsylvania Republicans and Democrats came to an Agreement on a Bipartisan Election Reform Bill that Gov. Tom Wolf (D) called “the biggest change to our elections in generations.” The Centerpiece of this New Law was a Major Expansion of Mail-in Voting. Previously, Pennsylvania only Allowed Absentee Voting-by-Mail for People who could Provide some Reason for why they couldn’t Appear to Vote-in-Person. With the New Law, No-Excuse Vote-by-Mail was Permitted.

The New Law stated that Mail-in-Voters: “shall, in secret enclose and securely seal their ballot in the secrecy envelope; which shall be placed in the second addressed and signed envelope for mailing.”

The Call for some sort of “secrecy sleeve” isn’t unique, 15 other States also require it for Absentee or Mail Voters, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, including Blue States like: New Jersey; New York; and Washington.

The State anticipated 80,000 to 100,000 Requests during the Primary, but there were more than 1.8 Million. The natural conclusion here is that Counting more Marginal Mail Votes will advantage Democrats, while Discarding more Marginal Mail Votes could help Trump and Republicans.

Lawsuits resulted in an Opinion written by Democratic Justice, Max Baer, the Court Decreed that Ballots that aren’t Enclosed in Secrecy Envelopes will Not Count. Critics worry that many Legitimate Votes will be Thrown-Out on “a minor technicality”, The Problem, according to Critics, is that in Practice, many well-meaning Voters will mess this up. So the Main Impact of this Policy might Not be to Prevent Fraud, it might be to Throw-Out Tens of Thousands of Legitimately Cast Votes.










NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker