State explains why naked ballot cure law must wait until 2027

Roughly 5,200 mail-in ballots were rejected in 2025 under categories that include naked ballots, but election officials say their records cannot establish the precise number

New Jersey election officials say a new law allowing voters to correct improperly submitted mail-in ballots won’t take effect until 2027, leaving voters who make a relatively simple mistake at risk of having their votes discarded in this November’s midterm elections.

The New Jersey Division of Elections also says that roughly 5,200 mail-in ballots were rejected in the 2025 general election under categories that include so-called “naked ballots,” although the state acknowledges that its reporting system cannot determine precisely how many voters were disenfranchised because of that particular defect.

A naked ballot occurs when a voter returns a completed mail-in ballot without placing it in the required inner envelope, which includes voter certification. Instead, the voter places the ballot directly into the outer mailing envelope. Under current procedures, election officials can reject those ballots without giving voters a chance to correct the mistake.

The new law aims to fix this by letting voters correct certain deficiencies rather than automatically losing their votes.

But the state has said it cannot implement the changes for the 2026 election, delaying the new protections until 2027.

To explain its rejection figures, the Division of Elections said counties generally use two codes for rejecting ballots that lack the required inner envelope: “CMS,” for a missing certificate, and “OEU,” for an unsealed envelope. Some counties instead use a miscellaneous category, “O,” for other reasons.

State officials say none of those categories exclusively identify naked ballots.

The certificate-missing code can also apply when a voter includes the inner envelope but fails to complete the certification. The unsealed-envelope code applies when the inner envelope is present but improperly sealed, while the miscellaneous category covers numerous unrelated defects.

“For several reasons, these numbers may overestimate the number of ballots rejected because they were not returned in the inner envelope,” the Division of Elections said in a statement.

The state also acknowledged that its figures could undercount certain defects because counties can record multiple reasons for rejecting a ballot, but the reports submitted to the state contain only the first reason entered.

That means a ballot rejected for multiple deficiencies might not appear in the naked-ballot-related categories, even when the voter failed to use the inner envelope.

“Finally, the state does not receive information on how a county makes its determinations for these categories,” the Division of Elections said.

The uncertainty makes it impossible to determine how many of the approximately 5,200 rejected ballots could have been counted if voters had been given an opportunity to correct their mistakes.

New Jersey already allows voters to cure mail-in ballots rejected for missing or mismatched signatures, but expanded protections for other defects require additional procedures and changes to the statewide voter registration system.

The delay means voters who make the same envelope mistake in the 2026 midterm elections could still have their ballots rejected, even though lawmakers have moved to establish a process intended to prevent that outcome.

The distinction matters: while a missing signature can be corrected under existing law, a ballot returned without its required inner envelope can be rejected without the same opportunity to cure.

For election officials, implementation requires updating procedures and tracking systems. For voters, it means that a technical error in returning a ballot can still determine whether their vote counts.