After years of uncertainty around undated ballots, Pa. announces changes to the ballot envelopes to reduce voter errors
Even Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney failed to date his mail ballot in November’s election.
HARRISBURG — After years of uncertainty about what counties should do with undated or incorrectly dated mail ballots, Pennsylvania has simplified the mail voting process in an effort to reduce voter errors.
The Pennsylvania Department of State on Wednesday rolled out new envelope language and formatting for the 2024 primary for all 67 counties in the hope of decreasing common voter errors that can end up disqualifying votes. Even Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney failed to date his mail ballot in November’s election, according to the Philadelphia City Commissioners’ preelection list of mail ballots with errors, and a spokesperson for the mayor said he would correct it.
Rejected mail ballots make up a small percentage of votes — only about 3% of the 597,000 total mail ballots cast in the 2023 primary — but mean that thousands of citizens’ choices aren’t counted due to small errors. And small numbers of votes have decided the outcome of several Pennsylvania elections in recent years. The 2022 Republican U.S. Senate primary between Mehmet Oz and Dave McCormick, for example, was decided for Oz by fewer than 1,000 votes statewide. And a Montgomery County township supervisors race is still tied because of how the county chose to count misdated ballots in the recent election.
“Now with six elections behind us with mail voting, it’s become clear that there are some technical mistakes that voters sometimes make when completing mail-in ballots, and we want to do what we can to mitigate the opportunities for that to occur,” Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt said in an interview.
The new mail ballot envelopes will include simpler language, shading for where a person must sign and date the envelope, and will prompt voters to write in the date with a prefilled “20″ at the start of the year.
Counties will be encouraged to change the color of the secrecy envelope — the envelope the voters use to seal their ballots before putting it into the mailing envelope — and add a watermark to help differentiate it. Counties are also allowed to mark with a hole-punch before sending them out to easier identify “naked” ballots as they come in.
The Department of State consulted with the Center for Civic Design, a Maryland-based nonprofit and the leading expert in accessible ballot design, to create these changes. The center helped form several prototypes that were tested with real voters before finalizing the changes.
In the 2023 primary election, about 47% of rejected mail ballots were discounted because they were returned after 8 p.m. on Election Day, 20% of mail ballots were rejected because they weren’t dated, 15% weren’t in a secrecy envelope, 8% had the incorrect date, and 5% lacked a signature, according to the Department of State.
Several of the changes announced Wednesday are required for all counties to implement. However, each county will still have flexibility to fit their materials to the state’s new ones.
Last week, the state inched closer to a resolution about how to handle incorrectly dated ballots after years of challenges to the mail-voting law, after a federal judge ruled that ballots without an accurate handwritten date on the outside of their envelopes should still be counted.
Schmidt said he’s happy with last week’s ruling but expects further litigation about how the state should handle undated and incorrectly dated ballots going into the 2024 election.
Until then, he hopes these simplifications make it easier for voters.
“Every election director I’ve worked with, in red counties or blue counties, wants to do everything they can to make sure that all eligible voters are able to vote on or before Election Day,” Schmidt said. “We want to do everything we can to mitigate against mistakes.”
Staff writer Chris Brennan contributed to this article.