This year, for the first time ever, mailed-in ballots in Pennsylvania require what’s called a “secrecy envelope”, where the ballot is sealed inside and then placed in another envelope for the actual mailing. This double-envelope shit is what Republicans wanted – even the Trump Campaign: “Republicans, including President Donald Trump’s campaign, the state Republican Party and Republican legislative leaders, have argued in court that the law requires mail-in ballots without secrecy envelopes to be invalidated” [1]. The secrecy envelope is going to cause a lot of mail-in ballots to be invalidated, and a lot of Democrats in Pennsylvania are going to vote by mail, and well, you have already correctly guessed why Republicans are in favor of them.

And when they’re not Dem votes getting tossed? Well, why not turn it into evidence of a Democratic plot to cheat in the election?

On Thursday the US Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Dave Freed, announced that his office was conducting an investigation of nine military absentee ballots cast for President Trump that were found discarded. Naturally Trump seized on the reports as a conspiracy against him [2] amid his ongoing tantrum of refusing to accept what is likely an impending election loss.

Hours later, Freed revised this to “Of the nine ballots that were discarded and then recovered, 7 were cast for presidential candidate Donald Trump. Two of the discarded ballots had been resealed inside their appropriate envelopes by Luzerne elections staff prior to recovery by the FBI and the contents of those 2 ballots are unknown” [3]. Further reporting from Military Times says when they “contacted Freed’s office for clarification on statements in the release, public affairs officer Dawn Clark confirmed that the discarded ballots were for the Nov. 3 general election and that they were improperly opened by county staff” [4].

Why were the ballots discarded? They were missing the fucking secrecy envelopes [5].