How 'naked ballots' in Pennsylvania could cost Joe Biden the election [View all]

[RandySF]

The state Supreme Court in Pennsylvania, a critical battleground state that’s seen as increasingly likely to determine who wins the White House, last week ordered officials to throw out “naked ballots” — mail ballots that arrive without inner “secrecy envelopes.” Pennsylvania uses a two-envelope mail ballot system: A completed ballot goes into a “secrecy envelope” that has no identifying information, and then into a larger mailing envelope that the voter signs.

It’s unclear how many naked ballots there will be, because this is the first year any Pennsylvania voter can vote by mail, and most counties counted them in the June primary without tracking how many there were.

But Philadelphia’s top elections official warned Monday that the court’s ruling “is going to cause electoral chaos,” lead to tens of thousands of votes being thrown out, and put the state at the center of “significant postelection legal controversy, the likes of which we have not seen since Florida in 2000.”

The decision ordering them thrown out was part of a trio of rulings Thursday that, among other things, extended the deadline for voters to send mail ballots back, permitted the use of drop boxes for voters to return them, and removed the Green Party’s presidential ticket from the ballot.




https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/pennsylvania-naked-ballots-supreme-court-philadelphia-20200921.html