Voters in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania may find their ballots look different this year as the state prepares to introduce a new general election design for the first time this year aimed at reducing the number of rejected ballots.
Secretary of the Union Al Schmidt officially approved the state bulletin It was the last crucial legal challenge to the ballot for this fall’s presidential election, after the state Supreme Court on Monday upheld a ruling denying third-party candidate Cornel West’s attempt to get on the ballot.
This cleared the way for counties to begin preparing, printing and distributing mail-in ballots to those who requested them. Once they become available, voters will be able to visit their local election offices and request and vote by mail in person.
The new ballot design, unveiled by Pennsylvania officials last year and used for the first time in this year’s election, was created in hopes of reducing voter errors in a state where tens of thousands of ballots have been rejected in recent years. Mistakes include forgetting to record the date or leaving the privacy arm and introducing “naked voting.”
According to state officials, 21,800 mail-in ballots were rejected in the 2020 general election and about 23,700 in the 2022 general election. Most rejected ballots are thrown out because they arrive after polling day, but thousands of ballots are rejected because of missing signatures and similar paperwork errors.
In a critical swing state typically decided by tight margins — Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in Pennsylvania in 2020 by just 81,000 votes — rejected ballots can fundamentally shape the outcome of the race. Although Pennsylvania created pretext-free mail-in voting in 2019 with bipartisan support, the process didn’t go into effect until the early days of the Covid pandemic in 2020, when Trump seized on mail-in voting as fraudulent.
Pennsylvania’s mail-in ballots are once again the subject of a major legal battle in an election year. Voting rights advocates have sued to eliminate a provision that Republicans defend as integral to election integrity, the requirement that ballots with missing or inaccurate dates be thrown out on time. State Supreme Court ruled last week postal ballots with incorrect dates cannot be counted.
Pennsylvania’s new ballot design includes new instructions and a yellow privacy sleeve to remind voters to place their ballot inside. Some countries may also put holes in the ballot paper, which makes it easier to detect “naked ballots” ahead of time; if the ballots have been mailed correctly, the yellow arms should be visible through the pinhole windows.
Hoping to prevent voters from writing their birthdays on the date line, year will be filled.
In Pennsylvania, counties are allowed, but not required, to correct ballot errors such as blank ballots or missing signatures. For example, officials in Dauphin County, where Harrisburg lives, announced his plan Allowing voters to correct mail-in ballot errors this month.
Looking forward to November, the secretaries in Pennsylvania still wheno can process any mail ballots before polling day, meaning it could take days to count them.