The US supreme court appeared poised on Monday to curtail how mail-in ballots can be counted if they arrive after election day, which would affect laws in more than a dozen states during a midterm election year.
The justices are considering Watson v Republican National Committee, a challenge over a Mississippi state law that was brought in 2024 by the Republican party. Mississippi allows mailed ballots to be counted if they arrive within five business days of election day, so long as they were postmarked by election day. Mississippi changed its laws in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Fourteen states, Washington DC and three US territories have similar laws that allow for late-arriving ballots to be counted. Based on the justices’ questions, it is clear the case isn’t focused narrowly on Mississippi’s grace period, but on other states’ rules, which in some cases allow for a longer grace period and don’t require postmarks.
If I show up at my polling place two days after the polls close, am I still allowed to vote? Of course not. Voters get their mail-in ballots sometimes up to 60 days or more prior to the actual day of any election. There is absolutely no reason they can't be mailed in in an orderly time frame. Wanna make it easier for your people to vote? Maybe make the mail-in ballots postage paid. That'd certainly take the strain off of some. C'mon, guys...
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This would be wrong. We only know how many extra ballots we'll need AFTER the counting starts.
ReplyDeleteThe Wall Street Journal had a good editorial on this case. Essentially does the ballot box close on Election day which is uniformly set by Federal law or does it remain open for however long a jurisdiction wants it to be (meaning a week or two to gather mailed in ballots). They make a good point on that there is nothing in the law that gives the USPS any special status or direction on delivering ballots and typically they don't make any special effort to deliver them ASAP. Some state laws say that just giving your ballot to a relative or ballot harvester means it is officially "cast". Again, nothing about the time or place of delivery.
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