Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Missouri’s new rules for notarizing mail ballots getting tested in court

Missouri flag
Ahmed Zaggoudi/Getty Images

Progressive groups may use the courts to pursue even more wide-open absentee balloting in Missouri this year.

At issue is a new law, enacted this month in response to the coronavirus pandemic, suspending the state's usually strict excuse rules for voting by mail — but requiring a notary's signature on August primary and November presidential election ballot envelopes of people younger than 65.

The NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union have sued to block that witness requirement, which they argue is unconstitutionally burdensome during a public health emergency and discriminates in favor of older voters.


A trial judge in Jefferson City dismissed the case, but on Tuesday the state Supreme Court reversed that ruling and said the lawsuit could proceed.

The justices rejected the argument, at least for now, from the office of Attorney General Jay Aschroft, who fought the measure written by his fellow Republicans in control of the General Assembly.

"A bad flu season does involve tens of thousands of deaths nationwide," Ashcroft's chief litigator, D. John Sauer, said during oral arguments last week. "But nobody has ever contended that fear of contracting or spreading the flu is a statutory ground to cast an absentee ballot in Missouri."

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

The ultimate outcome could set a precedent for challenges to rules in the 11 other states that require some sort of countersignature on a mailed ballot.

It also could influence the turnout in Missouri, where President Trump is confident of securing the 10 electoral votes for a second time but GOP Gov. Mike Parson is expecting a viable challenge for re-election.

Officials are expecting a burst of mail voting because of the relaxed excuse requirement, after several elections where fewer than 10 percent of votes were cast that way. The question is whether the witness rule, if it survives, holds down the increase.

Missouri is also the home of Roy Blunt, a member of the Senate leadership and the principal Republican negotiator in Congress on federal election funding.

On Tuesday he pledged to support additional subsidies to the states in time to help them conduct healthy and efficient elections during the pandemic, but it's unclear how close he's willing to come to the $3.6 billion approved a month ago by the Democratic House — and whether a deal is struck in time to allow the cash to be spent by election officials in time.

Missouri remains one of the states where voting during a public health emergency will be most difficult, with or without notary-free ballots. Registration ends well ahead of Election Day and there is no early in-person voting, for example.

Read More

Electoral College map

It's possible Donald Trump and Kamala Harris could each get 269 electoral votes this year.

Electoral College rules are a problem. A worst-case tie may be ahead.

Johnson is the executive director of the Election Reformers Network, a national nonpartisan organization advancing common-sense reforms to protect elections from polarization. Keyssar is a Matthew W. Stirling Jr. professor of history and social policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. His work focuses on voting rights, electoral and political institutions, and the evolution of democracies.

It’s the worst-case presidential election scenario — a 269–269 tie in the Electoral College. In our hyper-competitive political era, such a scenario, though still unlikely, is becoming increasingly plausible, and we need to grapple with its implications.

Recent swing-state polling suggests a slight advantage for Kamala Harris in the Rust Belt, while Donald Trump leads in the Sun Belt. If the final results mirror these trends, Harris wins with 270 electoral votes. But should Trump take the single elector from Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district — won by Joe Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2016 — then both candidates would be deadlocked at 269.

Keep ReadingShow less
People holiding "Yes on 1" signs

People urge support for Question 1 in Maine.

Kyle Bailey

The Fahey Q&A: Kyle Bailey discusses Maine’s Question 1

Since organizing the Voters Not Politicians2018 ballot initiative that put citizens in charge ofdrawing Michigan's legislative maps, Fahey has been the founding executive director of The PeoplePeople, which is forming statewide networks to promote government accountability. Sheregularly interviews colleagues in the world of democracy reform for The Fulcrum.

Kyle Bailey is a former Maine state representative who managed the landmark ballot measure campaigns to win and protect ranked choice voting. He serves as campaign manager for Citizens to End SuperPACs and the Yes On 1 campaign to pass Question 1, a statewide ballot initiative that would place a limit of $5,000 on contributions to political action committees.

Keep ReadingShow less
Ballot envelopes moving through a sorting machine

Mailed ballots are sorted by a machine at the Denver Elections Division.

Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post

GOP targets fine print of voting by mail in battleground state suits

Rosenfeld is the editor and chief correspondent of Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

In 2020’s presidential election, 17 million more Americans voted than in 2016’s election. That record-setting turnout was historic and even more remarkable because it came in the midst of a deadly pandemic. A key reason for the increase was most states simplified and expanded voting with mailed-out ballots — which 43 percent of voters used.

Some battleground states saw dramatic expansions. Michigan went from 26 percent of its electorate voting with mailed-out ballots in 2016 to 59 percent in 2020. Pennsylvania went from 4 percent to 40 percent. The following spring, academics found that mailing ballots to voters had lifted 2020’s voter turnout across the political spectrum and had benefited Republican candidates — especially in states that previously had limited the option.

Keep ReadingShow less
Members of Congress in the House of Representatives

Every four years, Congress gathers to count electoral votes.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

No country still uses an electoral college − except the U.S.

Holzer is an associate professor of political science at Westminster College.

The United States is the only democracy in the world where a presidential candidate can get the most popular votes and still lose the election. Thanks to the Electoral College, that has happened five times in the country’s history. The most recent examples are from 2000, when Al Gore won the popular vote but George W. Bush won the Electoral College after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, and 2016, when Hillary Clinton got more votes nationwide than Donald Trump but lost in the Electoral College.

The Founding Fathers did not invent the idea of an electoral college. Rather, they borrowed the concept from Europe, where it had been used to pick emperors for hundreds of years.

Keep ReadingShow less