A flurry of lawsuits in Pennsylvania last week addressed the state’s mail-in balloting regulations.
To put it briefly, voters who do not date the affidavits that accompany their mail ballots will still have their ballots rejected in the crucial battleground state. However, voters who make any mistakes with their mail ballots will have the option to vote on election day using a provisional ballot.
After Tuesday night, there will be a lot of focus on provisional votes and their counting in Pennsylvania if the election is close.
According to the data, voters who have not yet returned their defective postal ballots are more likely to submit provisional ballots than those who have already done so.
The information on mail-in ballots and possible provisional ballots
According to publicly available data from the state secretary of state, around 2.2 million Pennsylvanians have had their mail ballot applications approved.
According to the most recent statistics released on Monday, roughly 82% of voters have submitted their mail-in ballots thus far. This indicates that almost 390,000 mail-in ballots are still pending.
Approximately 150,000 more postal ballots will arrive in time for counting, either through the mail or drop boxes, if Pennsylvania’s 2024 election follows the same pattern as the one we saw in 2022.
Voters who still have uncounted postal ballots must cast their ballots in person on election day in order for their votes to be counted.
These voters may cast regular ballots if they turn in their mail-in ballots; if not, they will cast provisional ballots, which election authorities will count only after verifying that the original mail-in ballots were not counted.
Approximately one-third of voters who requested and failed to return their mail ballots cast their ballots in person in 2022. Approximately 90,000 people are expected to cast ballots in person in 2022, with roughly 35,000 of those votes being cast via provisional ballots.
We anticipate that those provisional ballots will give Democratic candidates a few extra votes that won’t show up in vote totals until a few days after Election Day, as registered Democrats hold a disproportionate number of the outstanding postal ballots.
When election officials begin canvassing mail-in ballots on Tuesday, it becomes more challenging to predict how many will be returned.
In addition to prohibiting counties from “canvassing,” or opening up, mail ballots before to Election Day, Pennsylvania also rejects mail ballots if voters failed to enclose the ballots in inner secrecy envelopes or sign or date the affidavits on the outside of the return envelopes.
While some counties leave the duty for Election Day, others identify postal votes with missing secrecy envelopes or inadequate affidavits before Election Day without examining them. Because of this, we are unable to determine the actual status of mail-in ballots in certain counties.
As of Monday, 5,524 inadequate postal ballots were found using our panel of available statewide data by day: 2,258 had missing signatures, 2,471 had missing or incorrectly dated dates, and 795 lacked secrecy sleeves.
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Additionally, the data indicates that approximately 4,400 voters have used county-specific policies to “cure,” or correct, their incorrect mail-in ballots.
Approximately 0.8% of mail ballots have ever been reported as inadequate in counties where we expect election authorities to have reviewed returned votes for any affidavit or secrecy concerns. We would anticipate slightly fewer than 20,000 mail ballots with deficiencies overall if such were the case, but the deficiency rate might be greater in other counties.
Voters may cast provisional ballots on election day if they have returned defective postal ballots and have not yet corrected them. The California Supreme Court ruled last week that those provisional ballots will be counted.
