You can find the opinion here. I expect this will be appealed as have other Michigan fights over the ballot rules. One notable finding: One of the issues in this case concerns evidence—or lack thereof—of voter fraud and threats to … Continue reading
Category Archives: absentee ballots
NY Times: Courts on both sides of the United States issued rulings on Thursday that could expand mail-in voting in the election in November, as the postmaster general privately apologized to state officials for missteps in his agency’s efforts to … Continue reading
Politico: President Donald Trump has spent $20 million of his political war chest to stop it. He riffs about it at rallies. He tweets relentlessly about it.Yet six months into a crusade to stop universal mail-in voting, Trump hasn’t yet … Continue reading
You can find the decision at this link. … Continue reading
WaPo: A federal judge in Washington state on Thursday granted a request from 14 states to temporarily block operational changes within the U.S. Postal Service that have been blamed for a slowdown in mail delivery, saying that President Trump and … Continue reading
Zoe Tillman for BuzzFeed: President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Republican Party are devoting millions of dollars to wage a state-by-state legal battle against mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic, not only suing state officials but also intervening in cases where … Continue reading
Campaign messaging in North Carolina: The Trump campaign assures me that absentee voting is the most secure way to vote in North Carolina. #VoteByMail #NC pic.twitter.com/kgD7RWJ93B— Aylett "What's your voting plan?" Colston (@EveryVoiceNC) September 17, 2020 … Continue reading
High Country News: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, South Dakota encouraged voters to use absentee ballots in the June 3 presidential primary election. Although the state received almost 89,000 absentee ballots in the primaries— five times the number of … Continue reading
NYT: The Postal Service postcard urging voters to “plan ahead” if they intended to vote by mail seemed innocuous enough.But not to Colorado’s secretary of state, Jena Griswold, who dispatched her staff to call the Postal Service trying to stop … Continue reading
AP: A directive that restricted Ohio counties to one ballot drop box in November was arbitrary and unreasonable, a county judge ruled Tuesday, delivering the Republican secretary of state in the presidential battleground another in a series of blows to … Continue reading
AP: With concerns rising in Pennsylvania that tens of thousands of mail-in ballots will be discarded in the presidential election over technicalities, officials in the battleground state told counties that they cannot reject a ballot solely because an election official … Continue reading
Zach Montellaro for Politico: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are expecting huge surges in ballots cast by mail in 2020, like most states preparing to vote during the coronavirus pandemic. But all three Midwestern battlegrounds, which President Donald Trump flipped in … Continue reading
NBC Philadelphia reports. … Continue reading
Very troubling: Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose on Monday swiftly moved to block the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections from implementing a plan that would have allowed voters to drop off their completed absentee ballots at six libraries throughout … Continue reading
The latest from Ohio: The Cuyahoga County plan appears to be an end-around the ballot dropbox prohibition by LaRose. In a press release, local board members compared offering ballot collections locations to the existing precedent of sending bipartisan teams of … Continue reading
Release: A new report finds on average 1.7 percent of vote-by-mail ballots cast in California have been rejected over the past decade. In three counties studied, young and newly registered voters were more likely than older voters to have their ballots … Continue reading
CNN: Legal fights over absentee votes aren’t a new phenomenon, but they’ve taken on a newfound importance because of the surge in requests for mail-in ballots and states expanding access to vote-by-mail and, in some cases, conducting elections almost entirely … Continue reading
Release: The Green Party candidates for president and vice-president are demanding that the Wisconsin Supreme Court put them on the ballot today. “The court should have made a decision by now. We want a decision today to put us on the … Continue reading
Politico: For a few weeks, Donald Trump’s advisers had seemingly gotten through to him — the president was finally encouraging his supporters to vote by mail, at least some of the time.On-message Trump didn’t last long. He recently appeared to suggest people … Continue reading
Josh Douglas for CNN Opinion. … Continue reading
CNN: Attorney General William Barr has become one of the staunchest supporters of the President’s campaign against mail-in voting. Speaking in Phoenix on Thursday, Barr continued to push false and negative narratives about mail-in voting.“There’s no more secret vote, there’s … Continue reading
What a mess: The state Supreme Court told election officials Thursday that absentee ballots should not be mailed for now so the justices can determine whether they should include the Green Party’s presidential ticket. The 4-3 order left open the possibility of reprinting 2.3 … Continue reading
You can find the opinion here. The case is up on a preliminary injunction, and the case now goes back to the trial court, which is likely to again find for the plaintiffs (given the trial court’s earlier opinion) triggering … Continue reading
Court order. … Continue reading
Cleveland.com: President Trump’s re-election campaign Thursday jumped into a legal fight over Ohio’s elections, seeking to prevent a push for multiple drop boxes for absentee ballots in counties across the state.Trump’s campaign, the Republican National Committee and the Ohio Republican … Continue reading
New PPIC report. … Continue reading
You can find the order here, based on lack of irreparable harm. The same issue should soon be decided by the Pa Supreme Court. … Continue reading
Texas Tribune: As Texas prepares for an expected deluge of mail-in votes in November, a federal judge has found that one facet of the state’s signature verification rules for those ballots is unconstitutional and must be reworked for the upcoming … Continue reading
WSJ Editorial: On election night, the electoral map might suggest a solid lead for Mr. Trump that is eroded as mail ballots are canvassed. What if Mr. Trump reprises his tweet from six days after Florida’s 2018 elections? “An honest vote count … Continue reading
Texas Tribune: As states across the country scramble to make voting safer in a pandemic, Texas is in the small minority of those requiring voters who want to cast their ballots by mail to present an excuse beyond the risk … Continue reading
That’s in an article entitled “Scoop: Kevin McCarthy Warns Trump’s War on Mail Could Screw GOP.” The idea that Trump is attacking mail-in voting to give himself an excuse if he loses to Biden in November is the most benign … Continue reading
Important deep dive by the WSJ: In a year of uncertainties, one thing seems certain: This November’s general election is shaping up to be one of the most complicated in U.S. history.States are racing to make changes to voting procedures … Continue reading
Politifact. … Continue reading
President Trump made some worrisome comments today that seemed to encourage double voting in the state of North Carolina. You can watch the short interview here. Here’s the transcript (my emphasis): (Q) 600,000 people could vote by absentee in this … Continue reading
Trip Gabriel for the NYT: In Michigan, Ms. Benson predicted that three million votes would be cast by mail this year, 60 percent of the total. She has called for changes to let election clerks process absentee ballots early — opening envelopes, … Continue reading
The stay is in effect as the court considers whether to grant emergency relief. … Continue reading
NPR: The U.S. Postal Service’s inspector general has outlined a number of ongoing concerns about the agency’s ability to manage the influx of mailed ballots for the 2020 election — separate from the recent controversial actions by the postmaster general.The … Continue reading
Here is the opinion. The court rejected other challenges to Georgia law as well, but the extension of the time for receipt of ballots is significant given how late Georgia voters can request and receive absentee ballots and given potential … Continue reading
NYT reports. … Continue reading
Texas Tribune: Until now, the fight over voting by mail in Texas during the coronavirus pandemic has focused on which voters are eligible to cast an absentee ballot. Now, the battle has progressed to an argument between the state and … Continue reading
AP: The cumbersome and sometimes slow counting of an expected record number of mail-in ballots — especially in some crucial swing states — could delay results and open the door to challenges in this year’s elections.In 13 states and the … Continue reading
AP: A judge ordered an Iowa county Thursday to invalidate 50,000 requests for absentee ballots, agreeing with President Donald Trump’s campaign that its elections commissioner overstepped his authority by pre-filling them with voters’ personal information.Judge Ian Thornhill issued a temporary … Continue reading
GPB: A Georgia State Election Board investigation Thursday found that Fulton County’s absentee ballot request process failed in the run-up to the June 9 primary, leaving hundreds of voters without the ballots they requested and contributing to long lines on … Continue reading
The participatory and partisan impacts of mandatory vote-by-mail View ORCID ProfileMichael Barber1,* and View ORCID ProfileJohn B. Holbein2,* See all authors and affiliationsScience Advances 26 Aug 2020:Vol. 6, no. 35, eabc7685DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abc7685 ArticleFigures & DataInfo & MetricseLetters PDF Abstract Recently, mandatory vote-by-mail has received a … Continue reading
Charles Stewart at the Monkey Cage: In an article forthcoming in the Harvard Data Science Review, I have worked to quantify how much riskier it is for someone to vote by mail than in person. Depending on the state in which a … Continue reading
Politico: Donald Trump Jr. is urging voters to cast absentee ballots in robocalls detected across the nation Wednesday — even as his father continues to rail against widespread mail-in voting.The robocalls, which reference this week’s Republican National Convention have been deployed in … Continue reading
Detroit News: A Michigan Court of Claims judge dismissed Wednesday a suit challenging Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s decision to mail absentee ballot applications to every registered voter in Michigan ahead of the August and November elections. The court in June had … Continue reading
Politico: Those partisan attacks on mail voting mirror wariness among California Republicans, according to a new poll conducted by the University of California, Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies.The poll affirmed that mail voting is already widespread in California: pluralities of both Republican … Continue reading
Politico: In a series of recent focus groups conducted in Philadelphia and Las Vegas by iVote — a Democratic group focused on voting rights and secretaries of state — and shared with POLITICO, Black and Latino voters said the experience of … Continue reading
Philadelphia Inquirer: Republican leaders in the Pennsylvania Senate introduced legislation Monday that would effectively prohibit the use of mail-ballot drop boxes that President Donald Trump has criticized, make it more likely that a winner in the presidential race is known soon after … Continue reading