Situation: In late 2019, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf and the Republican-led legislature agreed to an election reform compromise that expanded mail-in voting. The pandemic accelerated the adoption of this voting method. Months before the November election, the state Supreme Court ordered election authorities to invalidate "naked ballots," mail-in ballots that were returned without being stored in the required inner secrecy sleeve. 

By September 2020, analysts like Dave Wasserman were warning about the disruptive impact of naked ballots. Axios even dubbed naked ballots "2020's hanging chads." 

Solution: For Our Future recognized that confusion about voting rules could disenfranchise less frequent voters who were new to mail-in voting. In addition to our main mobilization ads, we crafted an in-house creative ("Friends Don't Let Friends Vote Naked") that used humor as an attention hook to deliver the core information: an animated instructional video on the steps for successfully completing a mail-in ballot. 

For Our Future Pennsylvania included the ad in a six-figure independent expenditure digital ad buy concentrated on ballot return targets in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

Using a mix of 1:1 targeting to our ballot request audiences on paid social and programmatic placements to expand reach and frequency with premium video inventory, For Our Future Pennsylvania delivered over 5 million targeted impressions and over 937,000 100% completed video views in the final week of voting. The ads drove traffic to a tailored voter information landing page with additional resources on drop boxes, voting hours, and a voter hotline.

Result: When the results were tallied, the rate of ballot rejection in Pennsylvania ended up at 0.038% according to Professor Michael McDonald's US Election Project, below the rejection rate in 2016 despite higher levels of mail-in voting.