AP: North Carolina can accept absentee ballots that are postmarked by Election Day for more than a week afterward, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals declined to block an extension for accepting the ballots that … Continue reading
Category Archives: absentee ballots
New Josh Douglas at CNN. … Continue reading
News & Observer: Voters whose absentee ballots have problems with their envelopes can now expect contact from board of elections offices in order to fix their ballots by Election Day. And less than 24 hours after North Carolina added new guidelines … Continue reading
You can find the opinion by Judge Smith (along with a concurrence by Judge Higgenbotham at this link. This case is a nice illustration of the dangers of bringing these suits seeking federal court orders easing voting during a pandemic. … Continue reading
South Florida Sun Sentinel: Teams of lawyers for President Donald Trump and Joe Biden got a rare look Friday at Broward voter signatures, at an event staged to clear up Republicans’ questions about election accuracy.Lawyers for Trump’s presidential campaign had … Continue reading
Penn Live oped: Failing to allow election officials to begin processing absentee ballots early will put undue pressure on them on Election Day. Failing to provide more time for processing these ballots also means that it is more likely that … Continue reading
Detroit News: A Michigan Court of Appeals panel has reversed a lower court ruling that would have required election officials to count late absentee ballots and allowed third parties to collect absentee ballots from voters.The Court of Claims “abused its discretion” … Continue reading
Mark Joseph Stern for Slate: Florida law also allows supervisors to set up discretionarydrop boxes outside locations that qualify as early voting sites but aren’t being used for that purpose. So, for instance, supervisors can place drop boxes outside libraries, courthouses, and … Continue reading
NYT: As the presidential election headed into the final stretch in late summer, counties in Ohio and Pennsylvania worried that a deluge of absentee ballot requests would swamp their printing capacity. So 16 of them contracted with Midwest Direct, a … Continue reading
Philly Inquirer: Pennsylvania has rejected 372,000 requests for mail ballots, straining election offices and bewildering voters in one of the most hotly contested battlegrounds in the presidential election.More than 90% of those applications, or about 336,000, were denied as duplicates, primarily because … Continue reading
Find it here. … Continue reading
AP: The lawsuit filed against Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and the U.S. Postal Service on Sept. 9 argued changes implemented in June harmed access to mail services in Montana, resulting in delayed delivery of medical prescriptions, payments, and job applications, … Continue reading
Very useful from the NYT. … Continue reading
This interesting ruling has some interesting discussions about the working of the electoral college/safe harbor rules. … Continue reading
NYT: In Madison, Wis., thousands of people have gone to parks to deliver their ballots during Saturday voting festivals. In Milwaukee, Facebook feeds are inundated with selfies of Democrats inserting ballots into drop boxes. And along the shores of Lake Superior, voters in … Continue reading
138-page opinion. It was pretty clear that’s where this one was heading, and I have serious doubts that the Trump campaign is going to do better if they try to appeal this up the appellate ladder. As I explained in … Continue reading
David Cottrell, Michael Herron, and Dan Smith have posted this new draft. Here is the abstract: Although most ballots in the United States have historically been cast in-person, an increasing number of Americans are turning to mail-in voting during the … Continue reading
As I noted in this Slate piece earlier this week, “Generally, though, the Republican side may be far more successful in blocking lower court orders sought by Democrats and voting rights groups seeking to expand voting by mail. Although Democrats … Continue reading
PBS News Hour: For many Native Americans living on tribal reservations, a home address is not a standard number and street name, like 735 Bleeker Street. Instead, it’s a series of instructions.“They’ll say something like, I live off highway 86 … Continue reading
Cleveland.com: State officials have told Cuyahoga County elections officials that they still can’t proceed with their plan to set up ballot collection sites at county libraries, saying a federal judge in a written order incorrectly described a policy set by … Continue reading
Daily Voice: Federal authorities on Wednesday arrested a postal carrier from Kearny who they said dumped 1,875 pieces of mail — including general election ballots and campaign flyers – instead of delivering them.Nicholas Beauchene, 26, was nabbed by special agents … Continue reading
NYT’s The Upshot. … Continue reading
This petition faces an uphill battle. Note the attempted distinction between “absentee” and “mail in” ballots and the attempt to argue around the Purcell principle. Note too that this does not come from state defendants objecting to the expansion of … Continue reading
From the ruling: It is now settled law that off-site drop boxes are neither prohibited nor compelled in Ohio.Yesterday, October 5, the Secretary issued Directive 2020-22. In his latest Directive, the Secretary authorized any board to deploy its staff to … Continue reading
AP: A judge blocked Iowa’s secretary of state Monday from enforcing an order that barred counties from sending absentee ballot applications to voters with their personal information already filled in.Judge Robert Hanson sided with Democratic Party groups, who contended that … Continue reading
USA Today: Battleground states that could decide the presidential election face a shrinking window to take action to allow the processing of absentee ballots before Election Day to cut down on the days or even weeks it could take to have final … Continue reading
You can find a majority, concurring, and dissenting opinion here. The judges broke along the party lines of the president that appointed them. … Continue reading
WRAL: A federal judge on Wednesday warned the State Board of Elections that recent changes to requirements for absentee mail-in voting in North Carolina do not have his approval.Those changes, outlined in a Sept. 22 memo from the state board … Continue reading
CNN: A federal judge in Montana rejected the Trump campaign’s effort to stop an expansion of mail-in voting in the state.The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee filed the lawsuit earlier this month after Democratic Montana Gov. Steve Bullock issued a directive allowing … Continue reading
The brief relies heavily on the Purcell Principle. … Continue reading
Washington Monthly: The bad news is that Republican officials in three swing states, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, are blocking legislation that could allow for the early processing of absentee ballots—purposefully making it take longer to get the election results. In … Continue reading
WaPo: Democratic voters who have requested mail ballots — and returned them — greatly outnumber Republicans so far in key battleground states, causing alarm among GOP party leaders and strategists that President Trump’s attacks on mail voting could be hurting … Continue reading
Time: For three weeks in August, as election officials across the country were preparing to send out mail-in ballots to tens of millions of voters, the U.S. Postal Service stopped fully updating a national change of address system that most … Continue reading
(Cross-posted at Take Care) The state Senate leadership in Pennsylvania, intervenors in litigation over the deadline to receive ballots cast by mail, has just asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay a Sept. 17 decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. … Continue reading
WaPo: For six months, the rules for how Americans can vote during the coronavirus pandemic have been locked in court battles while states across the country rushed to embrace mail ballots.Now, with just weeks to go before the Nov. 3 election, voting … Continue reading
Cleveland.com: A federal judge has ruled Ohio’s system of verifying signatures on absentee ballot applications is not burdensome enough to be struck down as illegal, rejecting arguments made by a coalition of voting-rights groups that sued the state.U.S. District Judge … Continue reading
The State: The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond has, at least temporarily, reinstated a ruling by a South Carolina federal judge that would allow S.C. voters who vote absentee to do it without having a witness signature.The ruling was … Continue reading
Detroit News reports. … Continue reading
Reuters reports. … Continue reading
Very good bipartisan news: The Michigan Legislature gave final approvals Thursday to a bill that would give local clerks 10 hours extra before the election to begin processing absentee ballots, a nod to the expected uptick in absentee voting in … Continue reading
Politico reports. … Continue reading
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has just published a new paper, “America’s Electorate is Increasingly Polarized Along Partisan Lines About Voting by Mail During the COVID-19 Crisis,” by Mackenzie Lockhart, Seth J. Hill, Jennifer Merolla, Mindy Romero, … Continue reading
The states make an argument on the merits under Anderson-Burdick balancing and argue it is too late to make changes to election rules under the Purcell Principle. I expect Purcell to be invoked more and more as we proceed from … Continue reading
AJC: The Republican National Committee is getting involved in an appeal over absentee ballot deadlines in Georgia, making it the 20th state where the Republican Party is fighting election lawsuits.The RNC and the Georgia Republican Party filed a motion Monday urging the … Continue reading
NYT: The North Carolina Republican Party spent $213,000 on glossy mailers sent out in August to voters believed to be supporters of President Trump.“Urgent Notice,” the mailers warned, alongside a photo of the president. On the flip side, voters found … Continue reading
Jonathan Lai: A lot of comments/replies have been about how easy it is to know to use the secrecy envelope. A child could do it; it’s not rocket science; how dumb do you have to be; etc.Here’s part of an … Continue reading
Jonathan Lai for the Inquirer: The state Supreme Court in Pennsylvania, a critical battleground state that’s seen as increasingly likely to determine who wins the White House, last week ordered officials to throw out what’s known as “naked ballots” — mail ballots that … Continue reading
You can find the brief at this link. This is disappointing from Secretary LaRose. The brief argues that to the extent the statute is ambiguous, the courts should give his interpretation deference. Yet Secretary LaRose has said he favored expansive … Continue reading
Steven Rosenfeld: Across the country, the past week has seen the Democratic Party and voting rights groups win legal victories to make it easier to vote in the presidential election. But no victory addresses what some experienced election officials say … Continue reading
Houston Chronicle: There’s been a breakthrough in the weeks-long standoff over the availability of voter registration materials in Houston post offices with just weeks to go before the election.Word came in a letter Friday to two Houston Democrats from the … Continue reading