Centre County has introduced a new feature for mail-in ballots this election designed to help election workers quickly spot ballots missing the required secrecy envelope, which can be a common reason some ballots may get rejected in the mail-in voting process.
This year, the county had the printer punch a small hole into the outer mail-in ballot envelope.
When mail-in ballots arrive at the county elections office, workers timestamp ballots and check for a valid signature, date and, now, for that little yellow glimpse of the secrecy envelope.
“That hole punch simply allows the elections office staff when they receive your ballot to be able to see at a glance if your ballot is in a yellow secrecy envelope, or if it is a naked ballot,” said Amber Concepcion, Centre County commissioner and board of elections chair.
“Naked ballots” returned without the secrecy envelope do not get counted. In past years workers could not identify these ballots until Election Day, since state law won’t let them open mail-in ballots until then.
But this year, election workers could start helping voters fix their ballots as soon as they arrived at the elections office.
When a ballot arrives without the secrecy envelope, the elections office reaches out to the voter by email if it has their email on file, or by mail if not, so voters have a chance to fix the issue.
Concepcion said voters can either go to the elections office in person to get a new mail-in ballot and fill it out there, or they can choose to vote with a provisional ballot at their polling place on Election Day.
That provisional ballot should be counted as the voter's actual ballot if their original mail-in ballot cannot be counted because it was missing the secrecy envelope, Concepcion said.
Mail-in ballots must be received at the county elections office by 8 p.m. on Election Day.
If you still have a mail-in ballot at this point, you should hand-deliver it to the elections office, put it in a drop box before 9 a.m. on Monday, or bring it to the polls on Tuesday from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. and trade it for an in-person ballot.