Many states have statutory requirements detailing what election officials must include in the mailings that go out to voters who have requested absentee/mail ballots or who will receive mail ballots automatically. Twenty states, Guam and the Virgin Islands require that absentee voters be provided with a secrecy sleeve. A secrecy sleeve—sometimes known as a privacy sleeve, inner envelope or identification envelope—is a paper document intended to protect voters’ privacy by separating their identity and signature from their ballot. After completing an absentee/mail ballot, a voter places it inside the secrecy sleeve, which then goes inside the return envelope.
Other states or jurisdictions may choose to use secrecy sleeves. In Maryland (Md. Election Code Ann. § 9-310) and Michigan (Mich. Comp. Laws § 168.764a), for example, local election boards can choose whether to include them. Meanwhile, Iowa requires secrecy sleeves only in certain circumstances (Iowa Code § 53.8).
The additional paper can increase the cost of ballot mailings, however. And secrecy sleeves may be unnecessary if the election jurisdiction has a different process to ensure a voter’s privacy when ballots are opened.
The states in the table below are those that require providing a secrecy sleeve to absentee voters.