Pennsylvania sees fewer mail ballots rejected for technicalities, a priority for election officials
HARRISBURG, Pa. — Pennsylvania election officials said Wednesday that the number of mail-in ballots rejected due to technicalities such as a missing date dropped significantly in last month’s primary after state officials again tried to help voters avoid mistakes that could have caused their ballots to be thrown out.
The success of mail-in voting could be crucial in determining the outcome of Pennsylvania’s presidential election in November, when the state is again expected to play a decisive role in the battle between Democratic President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, a Republican.
Pennsylvania’s top elections official, Secretary of State Al Schmidt, said counties reported a 13.5% drop in the number of mail-in ballots that were rejected for reasons the state had tried to address with a redesigned ballot measure. and instructions for voting by mail. That decline was calculated compared to the 2023 primaries.
Those reasons included voters writing an incorrect date on the outer “declaration” envelope; forgetting to write a date or sign their signature on the outer return envelope; or failing to place their ballot in an inner “secrecy” envelope.
Schmidt attributed the redesign to the reduced error rate, and said he did not think the decline was a coincidence or the result of a different or better educated electorate.
“It’s always a challenge to establish causality, but I think what we have here is clear and reliable data indicating that there has been a decline in the number of rejected ballots because of the problems that the State Department was trying to address with the redesign of the confidentiality envelope and the declaration envelope,” Schmidt said in an interview.
The redesigned envelope and instructions were used for the first time in last month’s primaries. The Department of State compared the rejection rates to the 2023 primary because the two elections were the only elections where counties had identical rules for which mail-in ballots should be counted and which should be rejected.
Pennsylvania vastly expanded mail-in voting in 2019, and lawsuits soon followed over whether counties should throw out ballots with missing or incorrect dates, questionable signatures or missing secrecy envelopes.
Federal courts are still considering a lawsuit over whether it is unconstitutional for counties to throw out a ballot because of a missing or incorrect date.
Meanwhile, Trump’s baseless claims that voting by mail is rife with fraud have led to a partisan standoff in the House over fixing flaws and gray areas in Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting law.
That includes legislation long sought by counties seeking help to more quickly process the massive influx of ballots during the presidential election and prevent a repeat of 2020’s lengthy vote count.
Trump and his allies tried to exploit the days after Pennsylvania polls closed to tabulate more than 2.5 million mail-in ballots to spread baseless conspiracy theories and cast doubt on the election’s legitimacy .
The bill faces long odds in the Republican-controlled Senate, where top Republicans are pushing for Pennsylvania to strengthen personal voter identification requirements to complement any election legislation — a demand Republicans have made since 2021.
Democrats have opposed such a change, saying there is little data on in-person voting fraud and that it would only deter some registered voters from voting.
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Follow Marc Levy at twitter.com/timelywriter.