US election: Could ‘naked ballots’ make the difference in one swing state?

Donald Trump faces re-election on November 3

Credit: Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

In the 2000 US election between George W Bush and Al Gore it was the “hanging chad”, the hole punched on a paper ballot to vote, that was the obscure election terminology at the centre of a fiercely contested result. This year, could it be the “naked ballot”?

In Pennsylvania, one of the most important battleground states thanks to its large amount of electoral college votes, its highest court has ruled that a certain type of postal vote must be thrown out and not counted. In America election rules are determined at a local level.

In Pennsylvania, people who vote by mail have to put their ballot in an envelope marked “official election ballot”, then put that in a second envelope and submit.  It has now been ruled that any postal vote that is not put in that first envelope, a so-called secret envelope, must not be counted.  Those votes are known as ‘naked ballots’.

They were counted in the state’s primary elections earlier this year and local voting last year but, as things stand, will not be allowed in November. 

Lisa Deeley, chair of the Philadelphia city election commissioners, warned that the decision “is going to cause electoral chaos” in a letter sent to state lawmakers urging an urgent change to the system.

In a letter to GOP state leg leaders, an election official warns 100K PA voters could be disenfranchised b/c of a ruling rejecting naked ballots. It "set PA up to be the subject of significant post-election legal controversy, the likes of which we have not seen since FL in 2000." pic.twitter.com/3ml96W00EX

— Holly Otterbein (@hollyotterbein) September 21, 2020

She extrapolated the recent number of known ‘naked ballots’ cast, taking into account expected surge in postal voting due to coronavirus, and estimated 100,000 such ballots could be submitted this election, all of which would be disqualified.

Donald Trump won the state of Pennsylvania by only 44,000 votes in 2016, meaning the rejection of those votes could have a major impact on the result.

“Recent actions by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court have set Pennsylvania up to be the subject of significant post-election legal controversy, the likes of which we have not seen since Florida in 2000,” Ms Deely wrote.

In the 2000 election, which was almost a dead heat, the Bush and Gore camps battled over exactly what counted as a vote in Florida, which Mr Bush initially won by a few hundred votes. Eventually the Supreme Court ended the recount and Mr Gore conceded.

The ‘naked ballot’ is just one of an unknown number of technical issues with postal voting that could flare up after the November 3 election, given the increased number of people who will vote that way rather than in-person due to the pandemic.

Mr Trump has repeatedly claimed, with little evidence, that mail-in voting is wide-open to fraud. Critics fear the US president is laying the groundwork for a legal challenge over postal voting should he narrowly lose the election.