Jul 22, 2024 By Mike Jones 5 min read

A recent directive from the state Department of State requiring counties to print the entire year where voters must write the date on the exterior of their mail-in ballots is forcing elections offices to scramble to order new envelopes before the November election.

The department sent the information to all the counties on July 1 announcing the new requirements after voters made mistakes in the primary by not filling out the full year on the outer envelope as required by law.

But printing envelopes that include all four digits of the year means they can only be used through one election cycle, which will result in countless unused envelopes being discarded each year.

“When we order our mail-in and absentee envelopes, we’ll always have to have the year,” Washington County Elections Director Melanie Ostrander said. “So it could be wasteful … because estimating how many envelopes you’ll need in an election, it’s not easy.”

Fayette County Elections Director MaryBeth Kuznik agreed, saying it will be a guessing game each year.

“Going forward, the hard part for us and all of the counties is to know how many to order,” Kuznik said. “Once that 24 or 25 is on there, that’s the only year we can use (the envelopes).”

In the past, elections offices typically could buy a surplus of envelopes since they could be used every year. Now that won’t be the case since they will have time sensitive information already on them.

In Washington County, Ostrander said they had more than 6,000 unused mail-in envelopes from the primary, so they now will ask their vendor to print the 24 at the end so they can be used. The cost will be around $500, which Ostrander said is cost-effective and will help them as they order more mail-in ballots with the number expected to surge ahead of the upcoming Nov. 5 election.

“Everyone was surprised by the low turnout we had in the 2024 primary, so that’s why we had about 6,000 extra because of what I estimated the turnout would be,” Ostrander said. “We’ll order more than we need.”

During the 2020 general election, Fayette County received 19,545 mail-in votes. That number dropped to 9,454 in 2022, but the office has already received 7,626 mail-in ballot applications so far for the general election.

“We don’t know how many people will request ballots,” Kuznik said. “We have to take our best guess on how many (envelopes) to order.”

The state redesigned the mail-in ballot instructions and envelopes before the April primary in an attempt to limit the number of mistakes voters typically make – such as not signing the envelope or forgetting to write the date on it or misdating it. As part of that, the 20 in the year was already filled out, meaning voters only needed to write the day’s date and the final two digits of 24 in the slot for the year. However, many elections offices across the state noticed that voters were bypassing the final two digits, meaning the ballots would not be counted since they must be signed with the correct date.

Kuznik said that out of the more than 7,000 mail-in ballots during the primary, 32 had no date and 24 had the wrong date. While that is a relatively small number, other counties – including Washington – had larger problems with the dates, prompting the state to make the changes ahead of the upcoming election.

According to the Washington County elections office, out of the 286 rejected ballots, 185 of them were signed but either had no date, an incomplete date or an incorrect date, meaning they could not be counted due to state election laws. Washington County received a total of 11,471 mail-in and absentee ballots in the primary.

Both Ostrander and Kuznik added that it will not be feasible for them to make last-minute requests if they run out, meaning they have to order more than enough. Some elections directors across the state have already shared ways to print the last two digits as a way to still use the current envelopes, although Kuznik thinks manually doing that would be too labor intensive for her staff.

“Different counties are trying different things to comply with it,” she said.

Greene County Elections Director Joe Lemley said he plans to request a variance from the Department of State to print the final two digits on the mail-in ballot envelopes rather than over ordering and throwing away excess materials at the end of the year.

“I can’t buy in bulk and change it every year,” Lemley said. “I couldn’t every year order ahead for (the year) and then it would be garbage where we couldn’t use it again.”

He is now working on a format so they can run the blank envelope through their office printer so the final two digits will appear.

“How do you prepare for all of (the voters) who want it and then have that supply thrown out?” he said.

Ostrander said the state is trying to ensure all of the ballots, envelopes and instructions all look the same no matter the county.

​​”We want the date to look uniform. That’s the issue with the counties taking their surplus and putting the 24 on them because the Department of State is in charge of designing the envelope. They had to approve the 24 with how it looked. It wasn’t as simple as putting a stamp on it,” Ostrander said. “That’s why we went with our original printer. They came up with a template and they printed the originals and they showed it to the state. It’s been approved.”

Mail-in ballots are expected to go out sometime in mid-to-late September.