The administration of Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf revealed Friday that it will pay to include a self-addressed, stamped envelope with every ballot it mails to voters this year in the interest of boosting voter participation during the coronavirus pandemic.
Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar announced the move, saying that anyone who applies for a mail-in ballot online, in person or by mail will also have the cost of mailing the ballot back paid for.
“Our goal is to make voting as accessible, safe, and easy for eligible voters as possible,” Boockvar said in a news release. “Mail-in or absentee voting with prepaid postage means Pennsylvanians can vote from the comfort of their own home, without having to make a trip to the post office to buy a stamp, during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The cost of the stamps to return the ballots was estimated at $2 million by the Pennsylvania House Republican Caucus, which called it an unnecessary expense given that the U.S. Postal Service has already promised to deliver mailed ballots with or without postage.
“All Americans can vote for free by voting in-person at their polls, but in addition, the United States Postal Service has a long-standing policy of delivering ballots cast by mail in federal elections regardless of whether or not they have proper postage,” a caucus spokesperson said in a statement. “Instead of a narrowly tailored approach that considers the true costs of ensuring voting remains free to the voter, the Wolf Administration has once again taken the overbroad approach of carelessly [doling] out taxpayer dollars under the false pretense of solving a phantom problem.”
The Wolf administration, however, argued that many voters might be unaware of the Postal Service’s guarantee and thus miss out on voting because they lack easy access to stamps.
Mail-in voting has become a fraught topic this election cycle as President Donald Trump has voiced concerns that ballot fraud could lead to incorrect results. One such case has already emerged after several individuals, including a city councilman, were arrested in Paterson, New Jersey, and accused of engaging in a voting fraud effort in that state’s primary election.
Supporters of mail-in voting say that absentee voting on a smaller scale has taken place for decades without any significant history of problems.
