Pennsylvania's Supreme Court has ruled that election officials must discard naked ballots. Naked ballots are mail-in ballots that have not been placed in a secrecy envelope, which is a measure to ensure voter identifying information is not compromised. However, subjecting a presidential candidate to poll loss as a result of minor technicalities is a threat to the fairness of elections.

The state Supreme Court's ruling held up the decision that naked ballots should be invalidated. However, drop boxes were allowed to be used to return their ballots. Additionally, the court extended the deadline for county election officials to receive mail-in ballots by three days. These were significant legal matters that surrounded the November 2020 elections.

Following the court's ruling regarding naked ballots, the sensible option is to eliminate secrecy envelopes through the state legislature. Pennsylvania should move quickly to dismiss this law, as the envelopes do not have much impact on secrecy as it is purported. Mail-in votes are counted at a central place, and machines conduct the process to prevent onlookers from seeing voter information. Moreover, the secrecy envelopes hinder and slow down the counting process.

Pre-election polls projected the majority of Democrats would request mail-in ballots in the November election, making discarding naked ballots a disadvantage to Joe Biden. The surge in demand for mail-in voting was due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on citizens' health. More people were likely to favor the non-physical voting option, as it decreased the risk of contracting the disease. 

The November election was the first for most Pennsylvanians to vote under the state's 2019 no-excuse mail-in voting law. Before the election, officials estimated that more than 100,000 votes could be thrown out on the grounds of 'being naked.' Throwing out such a large portion of votes due to technicalities should be considered a threat to democracy.

We must also consider that in the previous election in 2016, Donald Trump won against Hilary Clinton in Pennsylvania by just 44,000 votes. Thus, the campaigns regarded the state as a tipping point in the election.

Despite Biden's victory in 2020, Pennsylvania should eliminate the secrecy envelopes for mail-in ballots for future elections. The envelopes are an unnecessary technicality that may disregard the people's will and potentially cause electoral chaos in Pennsylvania.