Pennsylvania elections workers hope redesigned mail ballot materials reduce voter confusion
BEAVER — Voters casting ballots by mail this year will receive newly redesigned materials intended to ease confusion and reduce the number of rejected ballots.
Late last year, Commonwealth Secretary Al Schmidt announced redesigned mail ballot envelopes and instruction sheets with revised language explaining how to properly fill out and return mail-in ballots.
The new materials will roll out during the 2024 primary and general elections. Secrecy envelopes will be yellow and watermarked for easy identification and outer envelopes will feature highlighted signature and date boxes alongside a pre-filled “20” at the beginning of the year to indicate the current date, rather than a birthdate.
Colorized return envelopes aim to help post office workers quickly identify and deliver ballots mailed close to Election Day.
“In each election cycle since 2020, when no-excuse mail-in voting was implemented in Pennsylvania, we have seen thousands of mail ballots not be counted because of unintended technical errors voters made when completing their ballot,” Schmidt said. “The (Josh) Shapiro administration is committed to giving every eligible Pennsylvanian the opportunity to cast their vote and make their voice heard.”
Pennsylvania counties rejected about 17,000 mail ballots during the 2023 primary – nearly 3% of all mail and absentee ballots cast. The most common reasons for ballot rejections were receipt after Election Day, lack of a date, lack of a secrecy envelope and incorrect date, according to the Department of State.
Pennsylvania’s Act 77 permitting “no-excuse” mail-in voting has led to a rise in voter participation, but legal disputes over whether to count ballots with misdated or undated return envelopes persist.
In November 2023, U.S. District Judge Susan Baxter ruled that ballots with incorrect or missing dates on the return envelope must be counted if they’re received by deadline on Election Day. Baxter said the date a voter writes on the return envelope is “immaterial” to the voter’s eligibility. The decision is now in the hands of a federal appeals court.
Colin Sisk, Beaver County elections director, said roughly 1%-2% of mail-in ballots submitted have been returned in recent election cycles, often due to misdating. More than 10,000 mail ballots were cast in Beaver County during the 2023 municipal election. The county publishes a list of returned ballots on its website the Friday before each election, Sisk noted, allowing voters to make necessary corrections before or on Election Day.
“My hope is (the ballot changes) really pull it in simply for the voters,” Sisk said. “We’ve given a set of these to every post office in the county so everyone has a physical copy that says here’s what is it.”
The last day to apply for a mail-in ballot for the 2024 primary is April 16. All ballots must be returned to the Beaver County Bureau of Elections Office by 8 p.m. April 23, the 2024 primary.
The Beaver County Elections Bureau, located in the Beaver County Courthouse, can be reached at 724-770-4440.
This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Redesigned mail ballot materials could reduce voter confusion
