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Absentee voting fight pressed anew in three Southern states
Sep 23 2020
Thanks to the pandemic and the coming surge of absentee voting, several swing states have already been compelled to grant extra time for ballots to arrive by mail. North Carolina joined this roster Tuesday.
To settle one from the blizzard of lawsuits pushed by Democrats, the state not only extended that deadline on Tuesday but also agreed to allow voters a chance to correct procedural mistakes with their absentee ballots.
The double-barrel agreement came as a fresh federal lawsuit was seeking to make Arkansas give its voters a similar "ballot curing" option, while Republicans appealed a federal judge's extension for mailed ballots in Georgia.
As the record wave of litigation continues to roil preparations six weeks from Election Day, these are the details of the latest developments:
<h3>North Carolina</h3>
<p>The state, with 15 electoral votes both President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden have in their sights, became the fourth battleground forced just this week to allow more time for ballot envelopes delayed in the mail. But unlike <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/vote-by-mail-deadline" target="_self">the other three</a>, where GOP appeals could yet reverse those decisions, North Carolina's seems destined to stand because it is the result of a lawsuit settlement.</p>
<p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>The state agreed to count absentee ballots that arrive up to nine days after the election, or Nov. 12, so long as they are postmarked by the time the polls close Election Day. Before this change, mail ballots were invalidated if they arrived more than three days late, still a more permissive deadline than about two-thirds of the states.</p>
<p>The state will also give voters a chance to fix issues with their absentee ballot, something that wasn't guaranteed in previous elections. A previous lawsuit already allowed voters to request and complete a new ballot if an error occurred. But this settlement makes the process easier by asking voters to fill out a form with the information missing from their ballot.</p>
<p>The state Board of Elections, three Democrats and two Republicans, unanimously agreed on these changes Tuesday. The settlement must now be blessed by a judge, which seems likely to be a formality.</p>
<h3>Arkansas</h3>
<p>The <a href="http://thefulcrum.us/league-of-women-voters" target="_self">League of Women Voters</a> filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday requesting state officials establish a process for voters to fix issues with their absentee ballot. Current law requires election administrators to toss out ballots with missing signatures or incorrect information, such as a wrong address.</p>
<p>Voting rights advocates worry this could disenfranchise thousands of voters in the reliably red state. The lawsuit asks officials to start absentee ballot reviews 15 days before the election to give administrators and voters enough time to address potential issues.</p>
<h3>Georgia</h3>
<p>The Republican National Committee and the Georgia GOP on Monday asked the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse an extension for mailed ballots this fall. Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had already started the appeals process.</p>
<p>A federal judge <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/absentee-ballot-georgia" target="_self">ruled</a> in August that election officials must count absentee ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 that arrive within the next three days. Before the ruling, state law mandated arrival by the time polls close on Election Day, the rule in 33 states altogether. The extension could add tens of thousands of valid votes in a state with 16 too-close-to-call electoral votes and a pair of close Senate races</p>
<p>Georgia is the 20th state where the national GOP is involved in election lawsuits. Republicans say voters in Georgia have plenty of time to send in their mail ballots so the extension is not necessary.</p>
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Rep. James Clyburn, along with other Democrats on the House subcommittee, led an investigation into election preparedness in four states.
Hill Democrats focus voting concerns on four big battlegrounds
Sep 10 2020
Congressional Democrats this week moved to focus heightened concern about election preparedness on four of the biggest battlegrounds: Texas, Florida, Georgia and Wisconsin.
The majority of a special House committee, created this spring to oversee the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic, issued a report Wednesday focusing their apprehension on the limits of mail-in voting, poll worker shortages and safety of polling places in those states — with a combined 93 electoral votes central to the campaign strategies of both President Trump and Joe Biden.
The report by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, which no Republicans signed, urged the states to spend quickly and generously to fix the problems — something they are unlikely to be able to do without a cash infusion from Congress itself, which looks less likely every day.
<p>The GOP-run Senate, Trump administration and Democratic House have been deadlocked for two months on the size and scope of another coronavirus economic recovery package, meaning the $3.6 billion in election aid the states have been seeking (or, more likely, a small fraction if it) is not close to being delivered in time to smooth the logistics of an election that is just 54 days away and will turn on the record use of voting by mail.</p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>"The states face the risk of serious problems in the general election," the report said. "In some of these states, these risks are exacerbated by state policies restricting mail-in voting and early voting."</p><p>Last month, the panel sent letters to chief election administrators in the four states requesting information about their general election plans. </p><p>"With just two months left before the general election, states cannot simply defer to local election officials to address these problems. Instead, states should move swiftly and proactively to implement CDC recommendations and ensure a free, fair, and safe election," the subcommittee wrote, referring to a <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/election-polling-locations.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">report</a> issued in June by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.</p><p>All four face significant shortages in poll workers, and officials have not done enough to boost recruitment, the panel found. Georgia has said it needs 20,000 people to staff precincts Nov. 3 but the state has only filled a quarter of these positions so far.</p><p>Georgia officials also decided not to send all 7 million voters an absentee ballot application, like they did for the primary. This change could lead to confusion and potential disenfranchisement, the panel concluded.</p><p>Since Florida's March presidential contest and August primaries, state officials have not done enough to address long wait times or poll worker shortages, the report found. The state also lacks a sufficient early voting period.</p><p>Texas is one of just six states, and the only one that's competitive in the presidential race, that has not relaxed its restrictive excuse rules for absentee voting in response to the risks of voting in person posed by Covid-19. Half of the state's 254 county election officials also indicated concerns about not having enough people to work the polls.</p><p>Long lines and polling location closures in Wisconsin's April primary raised concerns for how the state will conduct its elections this fall. To help with staffing shortages, state officials have requested 1,100 National Guard members to be deployed as poll workers. But the subcommittee warned this could lead to voter intimidation, "especially given the history of law enforcement suppressing the votes of people of color."</p><p>During a hearing Wednesday where the report was released, panel Chairman Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, a senior member of the House leadership and one of Biden's most influential backers, urged passage of additional funding to assist state elections and the Postal Service. (Grants totalling $400 million have almost all been spent since Congress delivered that money in March.)</p><p>Conducting a "free, fair and safe election in these circumstances is a challenge, but let there be no doubt if we all do our part America is up to the challenge," Clyburn said.</p><p>He also lambasted the president for resisting the additional money on the grounds it would allow for more voting by mail, which he asserted without evidence will create so much fraud that the November results can't be trusted — the first ever such denigration of democracy's basic function by an American president</p><p>"The evidence shows Americans are more likely to get struck by lightning than to conduct voter fraud by mail," Clyburn said. </p><p>Not so, responded Steve Scalise, the GOP whip and one of Trump's most important allies at the Capitol. "We don't want a recipe for disaster where we literally would be counting ballots weeks and weeks later," he said.</p>
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Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger cited evidence of double voting in most counties but said the discovery had not changed any outcomes.
Year's biggest election fraud case: Georgia suspects 1,000 of double voting
Sep 09 2020
One week after President Trump urged voters to test the integrity of the election system by trying to cast two ballots this fall, by mail and in person, Georgia has started probing whether 1,000 people committed felonies this summer by succeeding in doing precisely that.
The announcement Tuesday, by Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, launches by far the biggest investigation this year into potential voting fraud, which Trump baselessly maintains is rampant and threatens to invalidate the result of a presidential contest reliant on absentee ballots as never before.
Raffensberger said he has found almost no evidence of people out to scam the system, however. And he conceded that, during one of the year's most chaotic primaries, many may have been so skeptical about the fate of their ballot envelope that they headed to a polling place as a failsafe.
<p>"Every double voter will be investigated thoroughly," Raffensperger said at a news conference, noting that proof of nefarious "intentionality" isn't required by state law to convict and imprison someone for as long as a decade for voting twice. "At the end of the day, the voter was responsible and the voters know what they were doing."</p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>He said evidence of double voting, in the June primary and August runoffs, had been uncovered in 100 of the state's 159 counties but the discovery had not changed the outcome of any contests — which would undercut part of Trump's unfounded allegations about how easy it is to steal an election when mailable ballots are in wide circulation.</p><p>Last week, at a campaign stop in neighboring and similarly competitive North Carolina, Trump encouraged supporters to return an absentee ballot and then try to vote in person as a way to "test the system." </p><p>After aides suggested he was being hyperbolic, he issued more exhortations about double-voting — which in some states is itself an election fraud crime. At a minimum, it added yet another dimension to Trump's long campaign to sow doubt about the coming November result, an unprecedented upending of democracy's norms from an incumbent president. There is minimal evidence of any sort of fraud in recent American elections, using the mail or otherwise</p><p>Polling shows a tossup contest for Georgia's 16 electoral votes, which Trump took last time to extend the Republican nominees' winning streak in the state to six elections. Both of Georgia's GOP-held Senate seats are being contested this year.</p><p>The progressive Common Cause Georgia accused the state's top election official of meritless amplification of election integrity worries. "People who intentionally vote twice should be subject to the usual criminal penalties," it said. "But we are concerned that voters who were simply trying to vote may get caught up in the dragnet."</p><p>Raffensperger said he knew of just one voter "bragging" of voting twice. </p><p>Like many states, Georgia has a system to prevent such behavior: Receipt of each absentee ballot is recorded on computer servers, which local election workers can check before giving out ballots at polling places. Despite this safeguard, Raffensperger said, "the human element" allowed 1,000 people to vote both ways in a primary plagued by a shortage of poll workers, long lines and problems with a new generation of voting machines being used statewide for the first time.</p><p>Almost 150,000 people who requested absentee ballots showed up at polling places on election day, officials say, most of whom said it was because they never received their forms in the mail.</p><p>Voters were urged to vote absentee in the primaries to avoid Covid-19, and more than 1.1 million did so — shattering previous records. (Nearly half of all primary votes were cast remotely, up from 5 percent in most recent elections.) The record seems destined to be broken again in the general election; almost 1 million of the state's 7.4 million voters have already requested an absentee ballot. </p><p>Raffensperger and the State Election Board have made some changes to make the fall election smoother than the summer's primary, including a new online system for requesting a no-excuse absentee ballot, the addition of secure drop boxes for those ballots and an earlier start to the processing of absentee ballots.</p>
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As many as 2.5 million Georgians may vote by mail this fall.
Battleground Georgia latest focus of fight over delayed ballots
Sep 08 2020
Georgia has decided to fight a federal court ruling that ballots postmarked by Election Day must be counted even if they're delayed in the mail as long as three days.
A final decision on the appeal, assuming it comes by the election in eight weeks, will determine the fate of tens of thousands of votes — which could be decisive in a collection of high-profile close races, starting with the tossup contest for Georgia's potentially decisive 16 electoral votes.
The state is among 33, including half a dozen other presidential battlegrounds, where mailed ballots are normally valid only if they arrive to be counted by the time the polls close. But a week ago Judge Eleanor Ross of Atlanta sided with voting rights groups that argue those laws, if applied during a pandemic where a surge in remote voting is sure to put extraordinary strain on the Postal Service, will unconstitutionally disenfranchise a small but pivotal bloc of the national electorate.
<p>Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger over the weekend asked the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to block Ross' ruling, mainly on the grounds that it was wrong for courts to change the rules so close to an election — an argument that has been persuasive to other federal appeals courts, including the Supreme Court in several cases this year. </p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>The pandemic does not justify such judicial intervention just weeks before absentee ballots are to be delivered, Raffensperger argued, and it will cause confusion for voters and delays for election officials. State law says the final result must be certified 17 days after Election Day, even as people who forget to sign their ballot envelopes or have indecipherable handwriting are given a chance at a do-over.</p><p>While she is "reluctant to interfere with Georgia's statutory election machinery," Ross wrote, such action is justified "where the risk of disenfranchisement is great, as is the case here."</p><p>A record 1.1 million Georgians voted by mail in the June primary, almost half the total vote. And 1 percent of the ballots were rejected, according to the state, seven out of eight of them because they were received at county election offices after the polls closed. But voting rights groups say the 8,500 that were "too late to count" is a significant understatement because many counties did not calculate their numbers completely. Two years ago, 3 percent of absentee ballots were rejected.</p><p>Statewide turnout this fall is likely to crest 5 million, and a comparable share may vote absentee in order to avoid risk of exposure to Covid-19 at a polling place. (The state has allowed no-excuse absentee voting for 15 years.)</p><p>The lawsuit at issue was filed by the <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/nse-ufot-new-georgia-project" target="_self">New Geogia Project</a>, a voter registration organization, which estimates at 60,000 the number of ballots likely to be received after Election Day. In the state's governor's race two years ago, Republican Brian Kemp's margin of victory over Democrat Stacey Abrams was 55,000 votes.</p><p>Bill Clinton in 1992 was the last Democrat to carry the state, and Donald Trump won it last time by 5 points. But polling since May has shown Joe Biden in a statistical tie with the president. In addition, in a highly unusual situation both GOP-held Senate seats are on the ballot this fall and have both become highly competitive, as have a pair of House contests in the Atlanta area.</p>
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