Details matter in election administration. Pima’s moving from a mail ballot system with two envelopes to a system with one, and expects the process to be cheaper, quicker, and easier for voters, without any meaningful compromise in security. More of this, please.
Category Archives: absentee ballots
A little bit of patience in NYC
NYC news outlets today are letting voters know they may need a little bit of patience to get results from the primary. The City’s board of elections has a helpful explainer on why. First-choice results can be tabulated right away. But if no candidate gets a majority in the first round, the last-place candidate is eliminated with redistribution of their supporters’ votes — and the city needs to know who’s in last place before doing that calculation. Which means waiting for all the ballots (including mail ballots and provisional ballots) to come in.
(UPDATE: it’d still be possible to release preliminary tentative rolling totals of both first-round and ultimate conclusion, clearly marked as preliminary, to show that the first-round total might well be misleading. And for practical purposes, the fact that there’s no “sore-loser law” in the city’s elections may mean that the primary isn’t really over until the fall.)
Also, while I’m highlighting explainers: CNN has an interactive ranked-choice primer using ice cream (perhaps to help New Yorkers beat the heat today).
And the Forward wonders whether Larry David’s to thank for the New York law that will allow people to hand out water to voters waiting on line in the heat.
“N.Y.C. Mayoral Primary May Hinge on Early Voters as Heat Wave Looms”
Yet another reminder that early and mail voting options help mitigate the degree to which a system of voting only on one day is subject to anomalies on that day that don’t really have anything to do with accurately conveying the desires of the eligible electorate. Here, it’s a forecast for 100-degree heat for Tuesday’s primary in NYC.
“Bipartisan deals on voting and election changes are rare. It just happened in one swing state”
Facing a legislature dominated by Democrats, Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo stood before Nevada lawmakers earlier this year with a message that some did not expect to go far: “Set aside partisan politics.”
It was a plea that might have seemed more aspirational than realistic, given the country’s deep polarization. Yet it set the stage for one of the session’s most unexpected outcomes — a bipartisan agreement to bring voter ID requirements to the perennial battleground state by next year’s midterm elections.
In a deal that came together in the waning days of the session, the Democratic-controlled Legislature approved a bill that combined a requirement for voter ID — a conservative priority across the country and something that has been on Lombardo’s legislative wish list — with a Democratic-backed measure to add more drop boxes for mailed ballots in the state’s most populous counties.
Lombardo is expected to sign the bill.
“Ruling lets Cochise County throw out local election result over mail-ballot mistake”
Votebeat with a report on a ruling from Cochise County, Arizona, allowing a new election when 11,000 inactive voters were – improperly — not sent ballots for a May 2023 all-mail election decided by 750 votes.
“The Disparate and Durable Effects of Mail Voting Restrictions: Evidence from Texas”
More from Texas. This is interesting research on 2021’s SB1, which (among other elements) required voters casting mail ballots to provide either their driver’s license or state ID number or their Social Security digits, both on mail ballot applications and then again under the flap of a mail ballot envelope itself – and required the information to match the voters on the registration rolls.
The study tracked voters whose applications or ballots were rejected because of this requirement in the 2022 primary election. But the fascinating part for me is the longitudinal analysis using individual-level data, using difference-in-differences stats to try to assess the impact of the rejection on participating in other elections – the 2022 general election and the 2024 primaries. Interesting stuff.
“Kansas ends mail-in ballot grace period. Why have other states followed?”
Once a bipartisan safeguard against postal delays and slow mail processing times, Kansas’ three-day mail ballot grace period is now gone — axed by lawmakers, challenged in court, and mirrored in a growing number of Republican-led states. Following the 2020 election, former President Trump promoted false claims of widespread voter fraud, targeting states that allowed ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted after polls closed, many under temporary pandemic-era policies. Trump and his allies seized on mail delays and extended deadlines to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the results.
A law passed nearly unanimously by the Kansas Legislature in 2017 granted a three-day grace period for legally postmarked mail-in ballots to be counted after Election Day, responding to concerns that U.S. Postal Service delays were causing some ballots, especially from rural areas, to arrive late and go uncounted.
Since the 2020 election, however, some Kansas lawmakers have leaned into unfounded voter fraud claims to justify changes to election law and signal to constituents that they’re taking action, said Chloe Chaffin, fellowship manager at Loud Light. “Because of the big lie, all of a sudden, state legislators that want to show their constituents that they’re responsive and taking action, they will likely use it as an easy scapegoat essentially just to chip away at legal votes.” Chaffin said.
According to the Secretary of State’s office, 2,110 properly postmarked ballots that were counted in 2024 would have been thrown out under the new law eliminating the grace period….
“Federal election panel chair opposes counting ballots that arrive after Election Day”
Amid the Republican Party’s broad effort to hamstring voting by mail, the chair of an independent federal election commission said he believes states should no longer accept and count ballots after Election Day — a change that would lead to numerous ballots being rejected in multiple states.
“There should be a deadline for absentee or mail ballots prior to Election Day and then they should be returned by Election Day,” Donald Palmer, the chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), said in a House hearing Tuesday on California’s ballot counting process.
Palmer’s comments come after President Donald Trump has repeatedly called on states to no longer accept and count ballots that arrive after Election Day, and signed an executive order last month directing the EAC to withhold federal funding from states that continue to do so.
Mississippi is currently set to ask the Supreme Court to weigh in on whether states accepting late-arriving ballots are unconstitutional. If the court takes the case, which was brought by the Republican National Committee, its decision could have far-reaching implications for mail voting.
In his written testimony to the Committee on House Administration, Palmer specified that the statements were his personal opinion….
“Trump Wants Mail Votes to Arrive By Election Day. Red States Are Rushing to Toe the Line.”
Frustrated by slowing mail delivery, particularly in rural areas, the Kansas legislature in 2017 passed a law to let elections officials count mail ballots that arrived after Election Day, for up to three extra days, so long as the ballots were postmarked before polls closed. Kansas politicos joined other states with such a policy in calling this a “grace period.”
“Because that’s exactly what it was,” Jamie Shew, the clerk and top elections official in Douglas County, home to the city of Lawrence, told Bolts last week. “It was providing some grace for someone who did what they were supposed to do. We wanted to make sure those ballots counted.”
The reform drew zero committee testimony in opposition. Lawmakers voted 163-1 for it. Even Kansas’ then-secretary of state, Republican Kris Kobach, a longtime champion of voter restrictions who that same year helped run President Trump’s commission to investigate election fraud, wrote a letter of support: Kansans voting by mail need a little wiggle room, he told lawmakers, as a result of the U.S. Postal Service reducing processing sites in the state.
“There was universal acceptance because it just made sense,” said Shew, who helped draft the legislation and is now in his third decade as county clerk.
This was a popular line of thought around the country, and by the 2020 election nearly half of U.S. states—blue, red, and swing alike—had adopted their own grace-period laws.
Fast forward to this year: Republican politicians nationwide now can’t stand grace periods.
This past March alone brought news that two states—Kansas among them—will repeal their grace periods; that conservative federal judges are on the brink of killing grace periods in two other states; and that Trump, who for years has falsely alleged rampant mail-voting fraud, wants to pressure the rest of the nation to reject every mail ballot that arrives after polls close.
In Kansas, the Republicans who control the statehouse passed a bill this spring to end the grace period they’d created in 2017. In elections starting in 2026, any mail ballot received after 7 p.m. on Election Day will be tossed, even if it was postmarked in time.
Governor Laura Kelly, a Democrat, vetoed the bill, but Republicans had enough votes to override her. The bill, Kelly wrote in a veto letter, would “disenfranchise thousands of Kansas voters,” and constitutes “an attack” on rural voters because mail service is often slower for them than for people in cities.
Utah Republicans adopted a similar change just two weeks before Kansas, ending their state’s grace period amid a broad crackdown on mail voting. West Virginia is considering a bill to join them. …
NC elections, due process, and a friendly (?) amendment
Hi. Justin here. Rick Pildes just posted here about the significant federal due process problems with Friday’s state appellate opinion on the North Carolina state supreme court race.
I’ll go further: I think that the appellate decision raises a number of additional federal issues, all stemming from the fact that the only ballots challenged were early or mail ballots, despite the fact that the principal challenge (60,273 out of the 61,949 challenged ballots) has nothing to do with any invalidity in the method of voting. Instead, the challenges are based on allegedly missing voter registration data (more on that in a sec) also likely missing from unchallenged voters who went to the polls on election day. Because for purposes of whether their registrations are valid or invalid, the challenged voters and unchallenged voters are similarly situated, I don’t know why this isn’t an equal protection concern and a problem under 52 U.S.C. 10101(a)(2)(A). (There are other problems beyond these, as well – I don’t mean to be listing them all.)
But I agree with Rick that the federal due process problems are unmistakably front and center. Indeed, I think it may be even worse than he suggests.
Much of the reporting that has ventured into the weeds of these allegations says that the 60,273 challenged ballots were cast by voters who didn’t provide their driver’s license number or social security digits when registering. As Rick P. points out, that’s in part because the state registration form in the relevant period didn’t ask the voters for that info. Voters did what they were told to do, were told they were registered, and some had been voting for years. (There’s no indication anywhere in the case that any of these 60,273 voters are substantively ineligible under NC’s constitution.)
But there’s a further problem: in a passage wholly unrebutted by the majority, the dissenting opinion says that the description above just isn’t true. It’s not that 60,273 challenged ballots were cast by voters who didn’t provide their driver’s license or social security digits when registering. It’s that 60,273 challenged ballots don’t have those digits listed in the state database. Those things are NOT the same.
The dissent notes that, among other reasons, digits that are supplied but not matched to other systems aren’t kept in the state database. There are many reasons why the numbers for eligible voters may not match up, including typos by temps doing data entry, and discrepancies in how different databases store naming patterns. (All of these voters must show documentation of their identity before they vote for the first time, pursuant to both state law and HAVA.)
Put differently: some portion of these voters now presumptively disenfranchised by the appellate court’s opinion likely complied perfectly with state law. Judge Griffin apparently produced no evidence about how many voters are in this category, and how many are in the category Rick notes, in which the failure was the state’s fault and the voters did everything the state asked them to do. (On p. 32 of the dissent, Judge Hampson notes that the Board produced “evidence tending to show” that almost half of the voters likely did provide digits that aren’t now reflected in the database.)
I think that makes the due process problem that Rick P. highlighted even worse. If the dissent’s characterization of the evidence is accurate, for a set of the challenged voters, it’s not just that the rules have changed with respect to the notion that they might now, in rules shifting after the election, be held responsible for the state’s mistake. It’s that the rules have changed such that the court of appeals has ordered their ballots to be invalidated, after the election, without proof of any violation of North Carolina law.
“California elections officials rejected 122,000 ballots in 2024 election. Here’s why”
Nice look at the data in the Sacramento Bee.
Federal court finds several Texas election provisions from SB1 in 2021 run afoul of federal statutes
A long opinion from the district court in La Unión Del Pueblo Entero v. Abbott is here. Several portions of SB1 relating to mail-in voting and voter assistance were found to violate the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act. (There have been other legal issues previously adjudicated in this complicated case.) There are a lot of parties, a lot of sections of the bill in dispute, and a lot of subtlety in which parts are or are not enjoined, but it is mostly a win for the plaintiffs–for more, dig into the opinion.
“A bipartisan mail ballot bill in Nevada? It’s not as crazy as it sounds.”
Anything is possible in the Nevada Legislature — including a bipartisan bill on the politicized issue of mail ballots.
The top Democrat and Republican in the Assembly are joining forces on a bill that would require all sample ballots to be sent to voters before mail ballots are distributed. An amendment also would provide a clearer timeline for when mail ballots must be sent to voters.
Assembly Minority Leader Gregory Hafen (R-Pahrump) is the lead sponsor of AB148, and on Tuesday, Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager (D-Las Vegas) joined as a sponsor. The bill was heard Tuesday in the Assembly Committee on Legislative Operations and Elections, where it was supported by the Nevada Republican Party and progressive groups such as Silver State Voices and All Voting is Local.
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, also supports the bill.
By 10-5 vote, 5th Circuit opts not to take en banc decision that found Mississippi absentee ballots must be returned by Election Day to count in federal races
The opinions in the decision to deny the en banc petition are here, in RNC v. Wetzel. From the intro of the original panel decision, as a refresher of the issue:
Congress statutorily designated a singular “day for the election” of members of Congress and the appointment of presidential electors. Text, precedent, and historical practice confirm this “day for the election” is the day by which ballots must be both cast by voters and received by state officials. Because Mississippi’s statute allows ballot receipt up to five days after the federal election day, it is preempted by federal law. We reverse the district court’s contrary judgment and remand for further proceedings.
The principal dissent in the en banc decision is by Judge Graves:
I would grant the petition for rehearing. At a minimum, this case presents a question of exceptional importance: whether federal law prohibits states from counting valid ballots that are timely cast and received by election officials within a time period designated by state law. The substantial, if not overwhelming, weight of authority—including dictionary definitions, federal and state caselaw, and legislative history—counsels against the preemptive interpretation that the panel adopted. Moreover, the opinion conflicts with the tradition that forms the bedrock for our nation’s governance—federalism—which vests states with substantial discretion to regulate the intricacies of federal elections. Simply stated, federal law does not mandate that ballots be received by state officials before Election Day’s conclusion, and the panel’s contrary holding is erroneous.
It’s worth noting this decision formally only binds federal courts deciding cases in Mississippi, Texas, and Louisiana, but it could obviously influence how other courts think about the issue in the rest of the country (especially as far more states have late-arriving absentee ballot deadlines), and it may affect the strategy of litigants deciding whether to take the case to the Supreme Court.
Speaking of influence, here’s the lede from the San Diego Union-Tribune on another lawsuit: “Issa sues to block California from accepting mail-in ballots after Election Day.”
(It’s also worth noting this is a federal statute that sets Election Day for federal offices.)
Earlier ELB coverage is here (my look at questions about a private right of action), here (Rick H.’s take), here (Chris Geidner’s take), here (Justin Levitt’s perspective ahead of 2024), and here (on Adam Unikowsky’s take).