Thread by @grace_panetta

New: I dug into ballots rejected for lack of secrecy envelopes, or "naked" ballots in Pennsylvania — there have been projections that up to 100k ballots could be rejected, but the lack of any good data on this makes it very hard to know that w/ confidence businessinsider.com/pennsylvania-b…

Secrecy envelopes are a pretty obscure/outdated practice only still used in a handful of states that date back to a time when absentee ballots were mostly processed at precincts — now, including in Pennsylvania, they’re counted mainly at central processing locations

"The presence of a secrecy sleeve has nothing to do with the eligibility of the voter, the accuracy, or casting of the ballot," @AmberMcReynolds told me — esp given that officials often can't confirm they necessarily sent the inner sleeve in the first place

The figure that 30k-40k ballots could be rejected in Philly in up to 100k statewide from Philadelphia official Lisa Deeley is largely an extrapolation from 197 naked ballots that arrived in the city in 2019's local elections b/c there just isn't a whole lot more data to work with

"The only hard data the public has on this is scattered reporting from a couple of counties in the 2020 primary and data from Philadelphia in their pre-COVID municipal election in 2019. Data quality on this issue has long been a concern," @jon_m_rob told me of naked ballots

There isn’t any data on the national level either — so few states use secrecy envelopes and so few counties report data they aren’t even mentioned in either the 2016 or 2018 Election Administraiton & Voting Surveys from @EACGov, as you can see from the 2016 survey

Voting rights advocates I talked to from @commoncausepa, @aclupa, and @votingislocal are not convinced yet that the naked ballot issue has to or will definitely be a disastrous, chaotic election nightmare with up to 100k ballots rejected and think education can be effective

"Extensive public education will move the needle downwards on the number of 'naked ballots' even as the total volume increases to more than 20 times the 2019 levels, as we saw in the primary,” said Scott Seeborg, Pennsylvania state director of @votingislocal

Suzanne Almeida of Common Cause PA told me that no-excuse mail voting being so new to PA in 2020 "actually provides us an opportunity: we're not changing an established practice, we're teaching people how to do something for the first time"

Of course, another overarching problem is that there is no way for voters to correct the mistake if they forget their secrecy envelope: not only does PA have no statewide cure process, but officials aren't even alowed to open mail ballots envelopes until 7 AM on Election Day

TL;DR, voting rights advocates/election people I talked to were super grateful to Commissioner Deeley for raising the issue (its an obscure thing most of us wouldn't think about), & are mobilziing quickly with voter eduction efforts to avoid the worst-case scenario she floated

A lot of officials and voting experts would like to see states do away with the concept of secrecy envelopes altogether, but until then, the best we can hope for is more comprehensive data on this issue from counties and states — maybe in the 2020 EAVS (a girl can only hope!)