The Democratic chairwoman of Philadelphia’s election board, Lisa Deeley, warned about naked ballots. In a letter to lawmakers this week that the court’s requirement of an additional envelope for voters to mail back with their ballots could disenfranchise thousands of voters in the city.
Philadelphia’s top election official is warning that the new state Supreme Court ruling could cause up to 100,000 mail ballots to be rejected statewide in the November election.
You can read: Pennsylvania asks Supreme Court to extend mail voting deadlines
At issue is the use of “secrecy envelopes.” which are designed to protect the privacy of the voter. The voters returning an absentee ballot must insert the ballot into the secrecy envelope. And then, they insert that envelope into a larger envelope that carries the mailing address and postage.
For the state’s primary election, local election officials accepted ballots that were returned without the inner envelope. These are commonly referred to as “naked ballots”. They are used to accommodate the surge of voters in Pennsylvania. They cast absentee ballots for the first time because of the coronavirus pandemic.
But things have changed under last week’s court ruling. Now, they will reject ballots sent back to election officials without the inner envelope. Voters will have no opportunity to rectify the problem to make sure their vote is counted.
Naked ballots: An unfair technicality
According to Deeley the issue of the naked ballots is a technicality with unfair results. She said that “it’s just so unfair that we’re disenfranchising people that have done everything right. They applied for the mail-in ballot and got the mail-in ballot. Participants voted by the mail-in ballot, they put it in an envelope, returned to us on time.”
Pennsylvania is one of roughly 16 states that require such an inner envelope, according to a tally by the National Conference of State Legislatures. But some states decided to waive that requirement for the general election. They said would save time for election officials who anticipate processing a record number of mail-in ballots this fall.
Noticias Newswire
