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Harmeet Dhillon, one of the state's Republican National Committee members, says a new law's extension for postal delays creates "a lot of opportunity for mischief."
California will mail ballots to all and count those arriving 17 days late
Jun 26 2020
Griffiths is the editor of Independent Voter News.
Ballots will be delivered to every registered, active California voter this fall under a law signed Thursday by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The measure assures everyone in the nation's most populous state will be able to vote by mail in the presidential contest. It's the biggest single expansion so far of this alternative for the general election, when a surge of interest in absentee balloting nationwide seems guaranteed as a result of the coronavirus.
The bill also assures the outcome of close contests won't be known until nearly Thanksgiving, because a provision mandates that envelopes postmarked by Election Day be tabulated if they arrive as long as 17 days later. No other state has that long a grace period to allow for slow postal service.
<p>California's 55 electoral votes can be counted to go for Joe Biden, but President Trump will still have the opportunity to raise the state's unusually long delays in finalizing the returns if he decides to contest a close election nationwide. He has recently sowed doubt about the vote by amplifying his many unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud — which have included several unfounded allegations about California in recent weeks. </p><p>More substantively, the new rule could create an exceptionally long wait time for final results of hotly contested ballot measures and races for congressional, state and local offices.</p><p>Passed overwhelmingly in the Democratic-majority Legislature with some GOP votes, the law closely mirrors <a data-linked-post="2646153281" href="https://thefulcrum.us/california-voting-2646153281" target="_blank">a pair of executive orders</a> the Democratic governor issued in the past month in the name of boosting turnout and keeping polling places healthy.</p><p>Republicans had <a data-linked-post="2646090939" href="https://thefulcrum.us/voting/vote-by-mail-california" target="_blank">challenged</a> Newsom's actions as illegal executive overreach, but those lawsuits have now been rendered moot by the actions in Sacramento. Instead, the GOP is likely to focus its criticism on the newly lengthened extension for mailed votes.</p><p>Most voters in California are already registered permanent absentee, which means they automatically receive a ballot by mail for every primary and general election. Already this year, nearly 80 percent of active registered voters received a ballot by mail. The latest Public Policy Institute of California survey about attitudes toward state government found nearly <a href="https://www.ppic.org/press-release/many-in-state-say-the-worst-of-covid-19-is-ahead-for-u-s-most-prefer-caution-in-easing-restrictions-in-their-area/" target="_blank">three-quarters of likely voters</a> support expanding mail-in options for November.</p><p>"No one should have to risk their health — and possibly their life — to exercise their constitutional right to vote," said Democratic state Rep. Marc Berman, author of the new law. "In the midst of a deadly health pandemic, giving all California voters the opportunity to vote from the safety of their own home is the responsible thing to do."</p><p>The 17-day window, however, is being targeted by the GOP. One of the state's delegates to the Republican National Committee, Harmeet Dhillon, for instance, <a href="https://abc7.com/california-mail-in-ballots-2020-election-gavin-newsom-governor-november/6256365/" target="_blank">has labeled the expansion "bizarre"</a> and said it could open the floodgates to legal challenges over ballot signatures, raising integrity issues and dragging some races out for weeks.</p><p>"There is a lot of opportunity for mischief," she said. "There is a tremendous amount of uncertainty."</p><p>Much of the concern is over a practice colloquially known as <a href="https://ivn.us/2018/11/30/what-is-ballot-harvesting" target="_blank">ballot harvesting</a>. A state law enacted in 2016 makes it legal for anyone, paid political operative included, to collect and turn in mail-in ballots on behalf of voters. Democrats organized to take advantage of the liberalized rules and their collection efforts helped flip several Orange County congressional seats from red to blue in the 2018 midterm.</p><p>Democratic state Rep. Lorena Gonzales, an author of the law, said the change was simply meant to offer a public service, and that the rules prior to the bill's passage "provided yet another obstacle for individuals attempting to vote."</p><p>Those who object to the practice, however, say there is little protection against coercion, either by a family member or by a campaign collecting the ballots.</p><p>Last-minute ballot submissions slowed the count in several races in 2018, and bolstered a massive Democratic get-out-the-vote effort in several races. However, there is no evidence of widespread fraud. Republicans are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/we-got-our-clocks-cleaned-gop-quietly-works-to-expand-ballot-harvesting-in-california-while-criticizing-democrats-for-the-practice/2019/03/13/a432d902-41b7-11e9-922c-64d6b7840b82_story.html" target="_blank">reportedly</a> working to improve their own on-the-ground ballot collection operation for this November.</p><p>Many states have adopted measures to increase the use of mail-in voting in 2020, and some have already conducted all-mail elections with little problem. Nonpartisan reformers who <a href="https://ivn.us/posts/national-reformers-spotlight-record-setting-elections-under-vote-at-home-ranked-choice-voting" target="_blank">support increased use of vote-at-home methods</a> point to these elections as evidence that claims of widespread fraud under vote-by-mail are largely unfounded.</p><p>The biggest cast of voting fraud in recent years, forcing the do-over last year of a <a href="https://www.rollcall.com/2019/02/21/state-board-votes-for-new-election-in-north-carolinas-9th-district/" target="_blank">tainted congressional contest</a>, centered on Republican misbehavior. Testimony after the 2018 election described how GOP political consultant Leslie McCrae Dowless Jr. paid workers to collect ballots and return them to him, promising to then mail the ballots himself. Such ballot harvesting is illegal in North Carolina.</p><p><em>Visit </em><a href="https://ivn.us/" target="_blank"><em>IVN.us</em></a><em> for more coverage from Independent Voter News.</em></p>
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A line to vote in the primary in Houston in March. The wait for some Texans was four hours.
Texas won’t see a revival of straight-ticket voting this year
Jun 25 2020
Straight-ticket voting won't be returning to Texas now that a federal judge has rejected an effort by Democrats to maintain the practice.
Allowing Texans to cast one quick vote, in favor of one party's entire slate of candidates, has been allowed for a century and was the way two-thirds of 2018 ballots were cast in the second most populous state. But the Republican-majority Legislature eliminated that option starting this fall, joining a wave of other states in recent years.
The state Democratic Party sued in March to keep the system as is, but Judge Marina Garcia Marmolejo dismissed the claim on Wednesday by rejecting its central argument: Switching will cause so much confusion and delay in November that throngs of would-be voters will give up and walk away, effectively being disenfranchised in violation of the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act.
<p>The suit argued that ending the straight-party option discriminates against Latino and Black voters the most, because they generally live in urban neighborhoods where lines at polling places are already longest — and will become alarmingly longer if voters have to make individual selections. Texas ballots are customarily among the most extensive in the nation.</p>
<p>Garcia Marmolejo, nominated by President Barack Obama for the bench in Laredo, said the state party lacked standing to sue and was relying on "numerous suppositions that are uncertain to occur."</p>
<p>"The injuries here are hypothetical and are not couched as the direct result" of the elimination of straight-ticket voting, <a href="https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/admin/2020/Press/STV%20Dismissal.pdf?utm_content=&utm_medium=email&utm_name=&utm_source=govdelivery&utm_term=" target="_blank">she wrote</a>. "Rather, plaintiffs' injuries hinge on multiple uncertain intermediate predictions."</p>
<p>Garcia Marmolejo also noted how the coronavirus pandemic has made in-person voting a much more time-consuming experience nationwide — while also pushing millions of voters to request absentee ballots instead. (A challenge to Texas's <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/voting/texas-vote-by-mail-lawsuit" target="_self">refusal to relax</a> its excuse requirements to assure more mail-in voting is headed toward the Supreme Court.)</p>
<p>"Many Texans will endure longer lines at polling places indefinitely," she wrote. "And other Texans will experience shorter lines given that voters have been encouraged to steer clear from in-person voting where possible."</p>
<p>Straight-ticket voting was once a big feature of American elections but has steadily lost support in recent years.</p>
<p>Texas is one of eight states that have ended the practice in the past decade, <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/straight-ticket-voting-utah" target="_self">most recently </a>Utah in March. That leaves Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, Oklahoma and South Carolina as the only places that will permit one-and-done balloting this fall.</p>
<p>The argument mainly espoused by Republicans, which is that participatory democracy is improved by requiring separate choices in each contest, has triumphed over the argument mainly advanced by Democrats, in Texas and elsewhere, that speed and convenience at the polls will assure the strongest possible turnout.</p>
<p>Democrats believe that, with enough votes cast in the cities and suburbs, Joe Biden can carry Texas after 10 straight wins by the GOP nominee. President Trump won its 38 electoral votes by a comfortable 9 points last time.</p>
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No-excuse fight revived in Arkansas, 35 years after its top court ruled in favor
Jun 24 2020
The legal crusade to make mail voting easier this year has finally arrived in Arkansas, where some of the nation's toughest ballot restrictions haven't been challenged until now because the coronavirus pandemic arrived after the primaries.
Two prominent Democrats in the deeply red state filed a lawsuit Tuesday alleging the Arkansas election law flatly violates a 35-year-old state Supreme Court ruling that greatly expanded the right to absentee balloting. They asked a state judge in Little Rock to order election officials to stop demanding a detailed excuse from anyone who requests an absentee ballot — which resulted in 99 percent of votes being cast in person two years ago.
GOP Secretary of State John Thurston signaled he would fight the suit. "Given where we are at with the Covid-19 pandemic," he said, "the current voting system will be adequate."
<p>The plaintiffs are Olly Neal Jr., who retired as the longest-serving Black appeals court judge in state history, and Susan Inman, a former top state elections official. Both are in their 70s and assert they fear catching Covid-19 if they are compelled to vote in person Nov. 3.</p><p>Their case, like many others across the country, argues that requiring an excused absence from a polling place — the sort of close-quarters indoor space where the coronavirus can be most easily spread — will force voters to make an unconstitutional choice between participating in democracy and protecting their health.</p><p>The novel twist is that the law — which allows absentee voting only for those who are in the military or traveling overseas or can provide evidence they will be "unavoidably absent or unable to attend an election due to illness or physical disability" — seems to fly in the face of the view of the state's highest court.</p><p>It held in 1985 that voters are not required to explain why they do not want to vote in person and "that any and all reasons or excuses are valid, legitimate excuses for an Arkansas citizen to be unavoidably absent."</p><p>The litigation is the latest in a nationwide wave of efforts in federal and state courthouses to make voting both easy and safe this year — mainly by expanding use of the mail, which President Trump asserts without any evidence will lead to a wave of fraud. But, no matter what, the president can relax about holding the six Arkansas electoral votes and the entirely Republican congressional delegation is sure to stay that way.</p><p>The number of Covid-19 cases has doubled in Arkansas the past month, even as the spread of the disease has declined in most states, and 227 people have died.</p><p>The state's primaries were in early March, a couple of weeks before the pandemic forced a nearly nationwide shutdown. Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson has never issued a statewide stay-at-home order, but he did sign an executive order allowing no-excuse absentee voting in a May special election.</p><p>The GOP-dominated General Assembly in April blocked Democratic legislation that would have allowed all voters to choose for this year only whether to cast ballots by mail or in person.</p><p>The suit seeks to make the state spend its $4.7 million in federal election aid on sending absentee applications to all registered voters in postage-paid ballot return envelopes and local drop boxes.</p>
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Missouri’s new rules for notarizing mail ballots getting tested in court
Jun 24 2020
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.
<p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>"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."</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>Missouri remains one of the states where <a data-linked-post="2645865792" href="https://thefulcrum.us/voting/voting-during-coronavirus" target="_blank">voting during a public health emergency will be most difficult</a>, with or without notary-free ballots. Registration ends well ahead of Election Day and there is no early in-person voting, for example.</p>
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