In a split decision Wednesday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court granted voters who improperly cast a “naked” mail-in ballot permission to cast a provisional ballot at their polling place. Three of the seven justices offered dissenting opinions.
To preserve privacy, mail-in ballots are returned in two envelopes: an inner, secrecy envelope, and the outer mailing envelope. Pennsylvania election code requires voters to sign their name and write the date on the outer envelope.
This case started in Butler County where two voters, Faith Genser and Frank Matis, voted by mail in the 2024 primary election. Each put their completed ballots directly inside the mailing envelopes, and did not use the secrecy envelope.
That is a naked ballot. It matters because the name on the exterior of the ballot and the ballot choices can both be seen by the person opening the exterior envelope, destroying the secrecy. It is an incomplete ballot and is not counted.
When the Butler County election board received these ballots, the envelopes were scanned by a machine that measured their dimensions and predicted that both lacked a secrecy envelope, court papers said. Their votes were cancelled for lacking a secrecy envelope, and that was noted in the statewide computer system. This triggered the state computer system to send an automatic notice from the Department of State to each voter involved.
The notice tells the voter his or her ballot will not be counted due to lack of a secrecy envelope.
“After your ballot was received by
