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I thought an absentee ballot, postmarked by Election Day, that arrives Wednesday or later wasn’t a problem, but then I encountered this argument… https://bit.ly/3e6fJJs
When the polls close on Election Night, we want election workers to know precisely how many legitimate ballots exist in a voting “universe.” https://bit.ly/3e6fJJs
Vote-counters don’t need to immediately know who won, but they need to know there are, say, 12,345 votes that have been legitimately cast in their jurisdiction. https://bit.ly/3e6fJJs
This makes it much easier to catch accidental over-counts or under-counts. https://bit.ly/3e6fJJs
If, after counting all the votes (and any ballots where some choices were left blank), if the sum comes up to 12,352, they know a few ballots were counted twice. If the sum comes up to 12,335, they know ten ballots didn’t get counted. https://bit.ly/3e6fJJs
If a state accepts absentee ballots that arrive later in the week, vote-counters don’t know what their total “voting universe” is, and they’re forced to check their work against a moving target. The total sum keeps changing each day. https://bit.ly/3e6fJJs
Earlier this week, in the case regarding Wisconsin’s deadline, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote, “Elections must end sometime, a single deadline supplies clear notice, and requiring ballots be in by election day puts all voters on the same footing.” https://bit.ly/3e6fJJs
“Common sense, as well as constitutional law, compels… that government must play an active role in structuring elections,” and states have always required voters “to act in a timely fashion if they wish to express their views in the voting booth.” https://bit.ly/3e6fJJs
In most jurisdictions, ballots are at least required to be postmarked by Election Day or before. But the Pennsylvania supreme court ordered that a ballot with no postmark or an illegible postmark must be regarded as timely if it is received up to three days after Election Day.
Whether or not someone thinks election fraud on a scale to tip a close election is _probable_, allowing absentee ballots without a postmark to be accepted after Election Day makes this kind of fraud _possible_. https://bit.ly/3e6fJJs
