In January, voters in Bridgeport, Connecticut, will head to the polls for an unusual contest: a court-ordered redo of the city’s Democratic mayoral primary.
The Jan. 23 election will determine whether Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim fairly won his party’s nomination for mayor. If he loses, the city will have another mayoral general election in February, with his rival running as the Democratic nominee.
Ganim won in the September Democratic primary for mayor by 251 votes, but opponent John Gomes quickly alleged election fraud, releasing surveillance video of a Ganim supporter allegedly dropping stacks of absentee ballots into a drop box.
In Connecticut, there are strict laws on who can return a voter’s completed ballot, and the practice of collecting large numbers of ballots and returning them for others — often called ballot harvesting — is illegal.
Tag Archives: absentee ballots
Preliminary Injunction against Georgia’s Birthdate Requirement on Absentee Ballot Envelopes
Order (via Democracy Docket). The court relied on the “materiality” provision of the Civil Rights Act. Similar issues have arisen recently in Pennsylvania, and provoked an opinion from Justice Alito (as I recall), although the Supreme Court did not address the merits. The Court may need to weigh in on the scope and applicability of this provision before next year’s elections.
“Lawsuit over Wisconsin absentee ballot witness addresses allowed to proceed”
“A lawsuit that would let Wisconsin election officials accept absentee ballots with partial witness addresses as long as the correct addresses are discernable can proceed, a Dane County judge has ruled. …
“The lawsuit was filed against the Wisconsin Elections Commission and Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl last September after a Waukesha County judge ruled that election officials can’t fix or fill in missing address information on absentee ballot envelopes.”
Right now, the new lawsuit survived a motion to dismiss, with further proceedings to follow. Hopefully, this issue will all be straightened out in plenty of time for clear instructions to both voters and election officials.
“1.5% of all absentee/mail-in ballots were rejected in 2022”
Ballotpedia News reports (via Electionline). This rate was “roughly equal to the 1.4% rejection rate in 2018, the most recent midterm election, and up from the 1.0% and 0.8% rejection rates in the 2016 and 2020 presidential election cycles, respectively.”
Between the midterm election cycles in 2018 and 2022, the absentee/mail-in ballot rejection rate increased in 17 states. It decreased in 31, and Washington, D.C. Comparative data was unavailable for Alabama and Mississippi.”
“Delaware had the highest rejection rate in 2022, at 13.2%, up from 5.0% in 2018 and 1.3% in 2020.” 13.2%!!! Wow. I wonder if President Biden knows that.
“Arkansas (6.8%), Texas (3.4%), Kentucky (3.3%), and South Carolina (3.2%) followed with the highest rejection rates in 2022.
“Idaho had the lowest rejection rate, at effectively 0.0%. The state reported rejecting one absentee/mail-in ballot in Fremont County. One other county, Camas, reported no rejections, while the state’s remaining 42 counties indicated they lacked rejected ballot data.
“Vermont (0.1%), Iowa (0.2%), Ohio (0.3%), and South Dakota (0.4%) followed with the year’s lowest rejection rates.”
“Higher rejection rates were more common in states that require an excuse to vote by absentee/mail-in ballot. Eleven of those states had rates exceeding the national rate (1.5%), compared to two with lower rates.
“Lower rejection rates were more common in states where any voter can request an absentee/mail-in ballot. Twenty-two of those states had rates lower than the national rate, compared to five with higher rates.”
Georgia’s new voting law drives rejections of absentee ballots way up
Mark Niesse, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia’s Republican legislature tightened absentee ballot access, including by imposing an earlier deadline for requests for absentee ballots, after a record 1.3 million Georgians voted remotely in last year’s presidential election.
New data show “Missed deadline was No. 1 cause of absentee ballot denials.”
“In all, election officials rejected 4% of absentee ballot requests for this year’s municipal elections on Nov. 2, according to public voting records analyzed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. There were 1,362 rejected absentee ballot applications out of 35,312 submitted.
That’s an increase from less than 1% of absentee ballot applications rejected in last year’s general election.”