Editorial: What part of 'permanent' don't state election rulemakers understand?

You know what “permanent” means, right? According to definition experts at Merriam- Webster, it means “in a way that continues without changing or ending; in a way that is not brief or temporary.”

In other words, if you take a step that you call permanent, it’s something you expect to continue like inertia until it is acted upon by another force.

So why didn’t the Pennsylvania legislature mean it when they used the word for 2019 voting changes?

The new law — the Republican-backed and Wolf-signed Act 77 legislation that allowed expanded mail-in voting in 2020 — created something else. A permanent mail-in ballot list.

That list probably sounds like it might be a list you sign up for one time and then, barring action on your part, you will be registered for that mail-in ballot for as long as you keep voting. People who have been receiving letters from their county elections offices the last week or so know otherwise.

Permanent, apparently, doesn’t mean permanent. It means “this year” and then the state has the counties contact people next year to see if they really meant they wanted to keep voting by mail. And in case you think that verification is a one-time thing, nope. It will happen every year.

“It’s a misnomer,” said Chris Deluzio, policy director of the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Cyber Law, Policy and Security.

That’s the truth. Instead of being permanent, it’s annual. Which prompts two questions.

First, why isn’t it permanent? Is the annual printing and mailing and processing a good use of resources when people signed up for something they thought was permanent?

On the other hand, there could be very good reasons for it. Maybe the state doesn’t want to treat voting like a subscription you sign up for online and then forget about until you are hit with complications down the road. Maybe they want to make sure if you change your mind, you have a once-a-year opportunity to easily switch back without searching out how you make that happen.

But that brings us to the second question. Why call it “permanent” if it was always intended to be a sticker and not a tattoo?

It is yet another instance of confusion in messaging coming out of Harrisburg. And if you want another example, you don’t have to look further than the annual application, which includes a box that says “request to cancel permanent voter status.”

Would you think that meant you don’t want to vote anymore at all, or that you don’t want to vote by mail? The Department of State says it’s the former, but plenty of people calling their county offices are concerned it means the latter.

“I think the next time we’ll change that to avoid the confusion. It should read ‘request to cancel permanent absentee status,’ ” said Armstrong County Elections Bureau Director Mary Beth Kuznik.

Just like the confusion over privacy envelopes and “naked” ballots and whether a vote should count if the ballot was dated but not the envelope, it’s another instance of residents and counties dealing with messaging and design problems from the state.