Category Archives: absentee ballots

Happy California official canvass deadline day, to all who celebrate

absentee ballots, election administration

December 5 (30 days after election day) is the final final day for certifying elections in California.  Usually, many California counties have certified before today.  But this year, as a one-time only change responding to some 60,000 ballots left uncounted in 2022 due to signature issues, the state legislature left a longer period for voters to cure those mistakes, effectively precluding certification for most counties until December 3.

Paraphrasing Natalie Adona (who was paraphrasing Doug Chapin, who was paraphrasing any number of election gurus past and future): fast, accurate, cheap: pick any two.

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Bridgeport Candidate Who Engaged in Deliberate Election Fraud Gets a Slap on The Wrist

absentee ballots, chicanery

I was surprised to see such a light punishment for this egregious conduct, especially as this is an area that has seen an unusual amount of problematic activity:

 A former city councilman, who pleaded guilty to reduced charges in connection with election fraud allegations, will be spending three weekends behind bars.

Michael DeFilippo, 38, a Democrat who represented Bridgeport’s 133rd District, had been about to go to trial in U.S. District Court when he agreed to instead plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of deprivation of rights. He was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Victor Bolden in New Haven to three weekends of incarceration followed by a year of probation and was also ordered to pay a $15,000 fine….

The federal indictment states that in the run-up to both the April 2018 primary and June 2018 special election, DeFilippo distributed voter registration and absentee balloting materials to his tenants. His goal was to have his tenants register as Democrats, which would enable them to vote in the local primary election, and then to have his tenants vote by absentee ballot, the indictment states.

In order to achieve this goal, the indictment continues, DeFilippo completed voter registrations and absentee ballot applications on his tenants’ behalf and directed them to sign these documents. He also instructed an unindicted coconspirator to forge several absentee ballots and submit them on his behalf, according to the indictment.

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“Losing GOP candidate for NC Supreme Court challenges 60,000 ballots as recount starts”

absentee ballots, ballot access, judicial elections, provisional ballots, recounts,

News&Observer: Jefferson Griffin, the Republican candidate for North Carolina Supreme Court, requests a recount where he trails by 625 votes while also filing “a series of election protests on Tuesday challenging the validity of over 60,000 ballots cast across the state.”

His complaints, some of which have already been rejected by courts include:

  • “[C]ounties improperly counted ballots from voters who voted early but died before Election Day.”
  • Votes should be rejected from those “serving a felony sentence as of Election Day.”
  • Votes should be rejected from individuals who failed to attach “a driver’s license number or Social Security number” to their voter registrations, even though state law does not require this.
  • Votes from “military and overseas voters who have never resided in North Carolina” should be rejected despite laws that appear to permit this in certain circumstances.
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“Effort to repeal ranked choice voting and open primaries in Alaska on track to narrowly fail after latest ballot count”

absentee ballots, primaries, , ,

From Anchorage Daily News:

“Results posted Monday showed 50.03% of voters opposed the measure repealing ranked choice voting, while 49.97% were in favor of the repeal. Just 192 votes separated the two camps, with more ballots set to be counted.”

A final count is expected on November 20, the final day for accepting absentee ballots from overseas.

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“Bucks County board chair says comment about violating election law has been misinterpreted”

absentee ballots, recounts, Uncategorized,

Philadelphia Inquirer reports that Diane Ellis-Marseglia, the Bucks County Commissioner, has apologized for the “upset and confusion” caused by her defiant comments last week in which she said:

“People violate laws any time they want,” she added. “So, for me, if I violate this law it’s because I want a court to pay attention. There’s nothing more important than counting votes.”

It is perhaps worth reminding everyone that the intermediate appellate court in Pennsylvania held that not counting the misdated ballots was a violation of the Pennsylvania Constitution. The Supreme Court has not upheld that decision, but the defiance was to an order directing that the implications of that decision were not to be experimented with during the 2024 Election. No doubt one reason for that order is the overhang of the U.S. Supreme Court’s rather aggressive stance toward state courts under the new independent state legislature doctrine.

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“In Pennsylvania, the Election Litigation Continues, With a Twist; As a Senate recount plays out, at least four counties are ignoring an order from the State Supreme Court that undated or misdated mail ballots cannot be counted.”

absentee ballots, chicanery

NYT:

In an election defined in part by a tsunami of litigation before polls even opened, few states saw as much legal haggling over which ballots should count as Pennsylvania.

The polls have long since closed, yet a new round of litigation is flooding the recount battle between Senator Bob Casey, a Democrat, and Dave McCormick, his Republican challenger, who currently leads by around 21,000 votes, a margin rarely overtaken by a simple recount.

The landscape, however, is different. In at least four counties — Bucks, Philadelphia, Centre and Montgomery — local election officials are acting in open defiance of a ruling from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that arrived weeks before the election. The court found that mail ballots that are missing the date on the outer envelope, or have the wrong date, cannot be counted for this election.

The Bucks County election commission felt differently.

“It is a pretty stupid thing to not count someone’s vote simply because they didn’t date an envelope for a ballot,” said Robert Harvie Jr., the chairman of the board and a Democrat, during a meeting on Tuesday where the board voted 2-1 to count 405 ballots with date errors on the envelope. He added that election officials know when ballots were printed for voters, making the outer envelope date requirement meaningless.

“The law needs to be changed,” Mr. Harvie said.

The commissioners were advised that they were likely to be sued no matter how they ruled. “So we’re going to get sued either way, I’d rather be on the side of counting ballots than not counting them,” Mr. Harvie said.

Almost immediately, the McCormick campaign sued the county, demanding it obey the Pennsylvania Supreme Court guidance and not count the ballots, even though the ballots were unlikely to affect his outcome. The Republican National Committee also moved to intervene….

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CORRECTED LINK to FILING: Breaking: Republicans File Lawsuit Directly in Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Asking Court to Issue Order Today Directing All 67 PA Counties Not to Count Undated/Misdated But Timely Absentee Ballots (Relevant to McCormick-Casey Senate Race)

absentee ballots, recounts

See this filing. (Corrected link to filing)

Whatever one can say of the merits of the counting of such ballots and of this lawsuit (which makes a bizarre Purcell Principle argument), this issue, and statewide uniformity, needs to be resolved before the next election. We are very lucky the presidency is not riding on this question (something I and other election law specialists were very worried about).

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PA GOP Senate Candidate McCormick Files Suit Against Bucks County for Counting Misdated/Undated But Timely Mail-In Ballots, as McCormick-Casey Race Goes to Likely Recount

absentee ballots, recounts

Here is the complaint.

AP:

The U.S. Senate election in Pennsylvania between Democratic incumbent Sen. Bob Casey and Republican David McCormick is headed for a statewide recount, as counties continued Wednesday to sort through outstanding ballots and the campaigns jousted over which ones should count.

The Associated Press called the race for McCormick last week, concluding that not enough ballots remained to be counted in areas Casey was winning for him to take the lead.

A noon deadline passed Wednesday for Casey to waive his right to a statewide recount and Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro’s top election official, Secretary of State Al Schmidt, a Republican, announced that preliminary results had triggered a legally required statewide recount.

As of Wednesday, McCormick led by about 28,000 votes out of more than 6.9 million ballots counted — inside the 0.5% margin threshold to trigger an automatic statewide recount under Pennsylvania law….

Adam Bonin, a lawyer representing the Casey campaign in Philadelphia, said Republicans were aggressively and systematically challenging the provisional ballots of registered Democrats, delaying the vote counting process.

“What we are seeing this year is more organized, more disciplined, more directed and more comprehensive than what we saw in 2020,” Bonin said.

McCormick’s campaign consultant, Mark Harris, said large Democratic-controlled counties were dragging out the process by not adding the results of processed ballots to vote totals.

The McCormick campaign was challenging provisional ballots that it is allowed to challenge under the law, Harris said.

“This is clearly an effort to use lawfare to chip away at our lead,” Harris said. “This is not going to work. Dave McCormick is the senator-elect and will be the senator.”

Counties, meanwhile, were busy Wednesday processing tens of thousands of provisional ballots and hearing challenges to some of them by lawyers for Casey, McCormick and the state parties. A provisional ballot is typically cast at a polling place on Election Day and is separated from regular ballots in cases when elections workers need more time to determine a voter’s eligibility to vote….

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“Elon Musk Pushes ‘Ballot Curing’ in Pennsylvania, Eyeing Tight Margin”

absentee ballots, campaigns

NYT:

Elon Musk’s super PAC has been emphasizing “ballot curing” in the final days of the presidential campaign, a highly expensive strategy meant to pick up a few additional votes in a razor-thin election.

Mr. Musk’s group, America PAC, has sent a new last-minute field team into the state of Pennsylvania, according to two people with knowledge of the move who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it. One of the people said it was described to him as an “emergency” squad. A spokesman for America PAC declined to comment….

The fact that Mr. Musk’s super PAC is also pushing “ballot curing” in Pennsylvania suggests that, in the final hours, he and his team think the state will be very tight and that curing even a few ballots could be worth it to help Mr. Trump win the state.

Blitz Canvassing, a large contractor of America PAC, is leading the ballot curing operation for the super PAC in Pennsylvania, the people with knowledge of the move say. Blitz Canvassing has not been involved in the super PAC’s Pennsylvania door-knocking operations to date, making it all the more notable.

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“How Pennsylvania’s mail ballot rules will lead to thousands of provisional ballots on Election Day”

absentee ballots, election administration

Mark Meredith and Michael Morse for NBC News:

Overall, about 2.2 million Pennsylvanians have had approved mail ballot applications…. [R]oughly 390,000 mail ballots are outstanding.

If Pennsylvania’s 2024 election follows the same trend we observed in 2022, then about 150,000 more mail ballots will arrive in time to be counted, via either the mail or drop boxes…. [Further, in] 2022, about a third of voters who requested but did not return their mail ballots ultimately voted in person. Taking 2022 as a guide, we would expect around 90,000 to vote in person, with about 35,000 using provisional ballots….

It is more difficult to estimate how many mail ballots will be rejected once election officials start to canvass them Tuesday [because of missing data]…. Overall, our panel of the available statewide data by day show 5,524 deficient mail ballots as of Monday — 2,258 are missing signatures, 2,471 are missing dates or are misdated, and 795 lack secrecy sleeves. The data also shows that about 4,400 voters have taken advantage of county-specific polices to “cure,” or fix, their problematic mail ballots.

In counties where we expect election officials to have checked mail ballots returned to date for any affidavit or secrecy issues, about 0.8% of mail ballots have ever been recorded as deficient. If that holds true, we’d expect a little fewer than 20,000 deficient mail ballots statewide — but the deficiency rate may be higher in other counties.

Voters who have returned deficient mail ballots and have yet to fix them can vote on Election Day, typically by provisional ballot. Those provisional ballots will be counted, according to the state Supreme Court’s decision last week. However, at least in 2022, relatively few voters took advantage of that option.

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“Georgia Supreme Court halts Cobb County absentee ballot extension deadline | What this means for voters”

absentee ballots

11Alive:

The Georgia Supreme Court halted a ruling that allowed Cobb County to have an extension for its absentee ballots to be turned in, according to a court filing. 

The new decisions comes after a Cobb County Superior Court Judge signed an order allowing Cobb Elections to count the affected absentee ballots received by 5 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 8, as long as they are postmarked by 7 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 5.  The extension applied to absentee ballots mailed after Wednesday, Oct. 30. 

However, the Republican National Convention then filed an emergency motion with the state Supreme Court in an effort to halt the lower court’s ruling. This led Georgia’s highest court to approve the motion for a stay Monday afternoon, where they issued an order that the county elections office can only count absentee ballots received by Nov. 5 at 7p.m. on Election Day. 

This immediately nulls the previous extension, meaning all Cobb County voters affected must now vote in person or get their absentee ballots to the election office by 7 p.m. on Tuesday. The address is 995 Roswell St. NE, Marietta, Georgia. 

The order also mandates that Cobb Elections keeps all absentee ballots from those that arrive after the deadline in a “secure, safe and sealed container, separate from other ballots,” pending further court rulings. …

The Southern Poverty Law Center said because of the ruling, they are urging all voters to prioritize voting in person on Tuesday if at all possible. If they cannot vote in person, they should hand deliver the ballot to the county elections office as soon as possible. If that is not an option, they urge voters to send their ballot back to the county through overnight delivery. 

“Only as a last resort should voters simply mail their ballots,” the SPLC said. “Unfortunately, there are voters who will not be able to access the remaining options and will not have their voices heard in this election as a result of this ruling.” 

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