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Top 3 Great Lakes battlegrounds have mail ballot extensions, at least for now
Sep 22 2020
Delayed-in-the-mail extensions for absentee ballots have now been ordered by courts in all three of the crucial Great Lakes battlegrounds, increasing the odds for a more comprehensive but also a more prolonged presidential election.
The later deadlines that judges have ordered in the past week in Pennsylvania, Michigan and now Wisconsin are far from locked in place, however, because Republican efforts to reverse them are likely in all three states — with their collective 46 electoral votes central to President Trump's reelection prospects.
Federal Judge William Conley, for starters, has put in limbo for one week his own order on Tuesday, that Wisconsin ballots postmarked by Election Day be counted as valid if received by local clerks by Nov. 9, a six-day extension. He said he was putting a hold on that ruling to avoid confusion if his decision is overturned on appeal, and to keep the pressure on Wisconsinites to vote early.
<p>A state appeals judge on Friday <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/vote-by-mail-3296387" target="_self">granted a two-week</a> extension in Michigan for the arrival of ballots postmarked by the day before Election Day; the previous day, the state Supreme Court <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/pa-vote-by-mail" target="_self">ordered a three-day</a> grace period for mailed ballots in Pennsylvania. </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>All three decisions came in lawsuits filed by Democrats and voting rights groups, which have filed dozens of such claims across the country this year in hopes the courts will ease access to the ballot box and thereby boost turnout to the benefit of their candidates.</p><p>The Trump campaign said Tuesday it would press in the federal courts to restore the usual deadline in Pennsylvania — potentially setting up the first election cases to get before the Supreme Court since the death last week of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.</p><p>The Republican National Committee and the state GOP organizations in Wisconsin and Michigan, which argued for the status quo in those states, are expected to press their cases in the appeals courts.</p><p>Like 30 other states, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania normally invalidate ballots that arrive after the polls close. That could disenfranchise tens of thousands this year. Record numbers of voters in all three states, and almost everywhere across the country, are expected to test the Postal Service's capacity by casting their first-ever remote ballots in the next six weeks so they can avoid potential coronavirus exposure at a polling place. </p><p>"It is particularly unreasonable to expect undecided voters to exercise their voting franchise by absentee ballot well before the end of the presidential campaign, especially when Wisconsin's statutory deadline is giving them a false sense of confidence in timely receipt," the judge in that case wrote.</p><p>If his and the other court orders stand, they will almost guarantee a wait of a week or more after Election Day for the outcome of close races up and down the ballot — including, perhaps, the national presidential contest.</p><p>Significantly complicating a speedier count are laws in all three states that prevent election officials from beginning to process the ocean of mail ballots they receive — verifying the signatures on the envelopes, removing the ballots from their security sleeves and stacking them in front of the tabulating equipment — until the morning of Nov. 3.</p><p>Trump carried the three states by a combined 78,000 votes last time, much less than 1 percent of the votes cast, but for now former Vice President Joe Biden has narrow polling leads in all three.</p><p>The president has signaled several times that election night is when he and the country should rightfully expect to know the nationwide winner — a position at odds with the realities of fairly and completely tabulating the contest if it stays close.</p><p>The federal court ruling in Wisconsin, tackling a series of suits and countersuits by both parties and their allies, addressed a welter of efforts to make voting easier in a state that has had one of the rockiest records of election administration during the coronavirus pandemic. (Just last week another disaster was averted <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/wisconsin-vote-by-mail" target="_self">when a court permitted</a> more than 1 million vote-by-mail packets to be distributed on time across the state.)</p><p>Conley gave voters until Oct. 21 to register to vote by mail or online, a one-week extension. For those who do not receive requested mail ballots on time, he ordered the state to provide replacements online or by email. And he said poll workers may live in any county in the state, not just in the one where they're working — easing the burden on clerks to find poll workers during a public health emergency.</p><p>But the judge denied many of the things Democrats were after — including expanded early in-person voting, state-paid postage on mailed ballots and easements of voter ID requirements for in-person voting and witness signatures on mailed ballots.</p>
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Burst of legal victories gives hope to promoters of a comprehensive election
Sep 18 2020
A rare spurt of important victories, in three courthouses stretched across the country, has voting rights advocates breathing a little easier about the prospects for a smooth and reliable presidential election.
In battleground Pennsylvania, the state Supreme Court significantly eased the use of mail-in ballots on Thursday by ordering they be counted even if they arrive three days after Election Day and by permitting an expanded deployment of drop boxes.
A few hours later, a federal judge blocked a law in tossup Michigan that makes it a crime to hire drivers to take someone else to the polls.
And by day's end another federal judge, in Washington state, had blocked all the operational and policy changes made by the Postal Service this summer, concluding the way they had slowed the mail in recent months would amount to "voter disenfranchisement" if continued into November.
<p>In addition to those legal wins, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy apologized for missteps in his agency's efforts to help voters plan ahead if they choose to use absentee ballots — most recently a postcard sent to every household nationwide that offered blanket advice in conflict with the rules in many states. During a video conference with state officials he said the mailing was not an effort at disinformation, hoping to rebut persistent criticism he's working to undermine voting by mail at the behest of his political patron, President Trump.</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>Thursday's wave of developments provided an unusual blanket of good news for both good-government advocates and Democrats, who are working to assure the viability and legitimacy of an election that because of the coronavirus pandemic will be conducted away from polling places more than ever before. </p><p>So far, they have lost more of their lawsuits than they have won, including defeats in seven of eight cases that have been resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court. And all the while they have been buffeted by relentless and false claims from President Trump that liberalized mail-in voting will be the means of widespread fraud.</p><p>The election might "NEVER BE ACCURATELY DETERMINED" because of mail-in ballots, he said in a Thursday tweet that Twitter marked as misleading. "Stop Ballot Madness!"</p><p>One of the major problems with a reliable if not speedy count, in reality, is the disconnect between the policies put in place because of the pandemic to encourage the use of absentee ballots and the laws still on the books effectively restricting their use.</p><p>The high court ruling in Harrisburg helps resolve that in a state both Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden are counting on — and where the use of mail-in ballots surged for this summer's primary but 20,000 of them (almost half the margin by which Trump carried the state last time) were not counted because they arrived after the polls closed. The same rule is in effect in 32 other states. </p><p>Deciding a lawsuit filed by the state Democratic Party, the court said mailed votes arriving at county election offices by the close of business Nov. 6 would be counted — so long as they were mailed by Nov. 3. An envelope with a missing or illegible postmark must also be counted, the court said, "unless a preponderance of the evidence" shows it was mailed after the polls closed.</p><p>The ruling has the potential to make Pennsylvania the focus of a national cliffhanger if the margin is as tight as expected, tens of thousands of envelopes must still be opened in the days after the election — and the 20 electoral votes at stake decide if Trump or Biden wins. (Another state law, not touched by this case, says election officials must wait until the morning of Election Day to begin processing the piles of mailed ballots they receive in the weeks beforehand. The state expects absentee votes to account for half this year's likely total of 6 million.) </p><p>The justices also allowed expanded use of drop boxes for absentee ballots, an option for those voting at the last minute and not confident in the Postal Service. The Trump campaign has sued in federal court to prevent placement of the receptacles, arguing they will incubate fraud, but the judge was waiting to see how the state lawsuit concluded before starting proceedings in that case.</p><p>The court also removed the Green Party's presidential ticket from the ballot, a decision boosting Biden in a different way. The progressive party's 2016 nominee, Jill Stein, won almost 50,000 votes in the state, while Democrat Hillary Clinton came up just 44,000 votes short.</p><p>But Trump won on a couple of fronts. The justices said ballots that do not arrive inside a second "secrecy envelope" may be disqualified and third parties will still be prevented from collecting and returning mail ballots — the practice, legal in many states, that Republicans deride as "ballot harvesting."</p><p>The ruling was narrower but still significant in Michigan, with 16 electoral votes vital to the prospects of both candidates. (Trump won last time by just 11,000 votes.)</p><p>Judge Stephanie Davis of Flint lifted the restrictions on paying to transport people to polling places in response to a lawsuit by Priorities USA, a pro-Biden group that is working on a big get-out-the vote operation. Because of the unusual state law, Michigan has been the only place in the country where Uber does not offer discounted rides to the polls.</p><p>But Davis, named to the federal court by Trump, declined to ease the state's restrictions on political organizations helping people complete absentee ballot applications. Only voters and their family can handle the paperwork. </p><p>A federal judge in Washington state on Thursday granted a request from 14 states to temporarily block operational changes within the Postal Service that have been blamed for a slowdown in mail delivery, saying Trump and DeJoy are "involved in a politically motivated attack on the efficiency of the Postal Service" that could disrupt the 2020 election.</p><p>The federal judge assigned the Postal Service lawsuit brought by 14 state attorneys general, Stanley Bastian of Yakima, was an Obama nominee. He temporarily blocked the changes in the post offices systems nationwide after declaring that Trump and DeJoy "are involved in a politically motivated attack on the efficiency of the Postal Service."</p><p>DeJoy reversed several of the most controversial policies on the day the states filed their suit, but the judge said he was not taking the USPS leader at his word that would continue. Bastian said he was most focused on assuring all election-related envelopes continue to be treated as first class mail, a longstanding practice DeJoy backed away from but has now re-embraced. </p>
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Kamil Krzaczynski/Getty Images
A Wisconsinite casting a primary ballot this year. Nearly 1.8 million others came by mail.
Tossup Wisconsin won't be tipped by cheaters: Just 19 suspects in two years
Sep 17 2020
Fresh numbers about voting fraud in Wisconsin, one of the essential tossup states in the presidential race, offer the latest evidence underscoring how wrong President Trump is about widespread cheating delegitimizing the election.
Nineteen. That's the grand total of instances of suspected fraud statewide during the past three elections: the 2018 midterm, the presidential primary in April and the regular primary last month. That's out of more than 5.2 million ballots cast in those elections.
And just three of the cases involved misuse of mailed ballots, the report Wednesday from the state Elections Commission said, even though voters have smashed previous records for Wisconsin's no-excuse absentee voting system amid the coronavirus pandemic.
<p>Trump has asserted dozens of times that such a rapid expansion of mail voting will assure "massive" fraud this fall, and recently he's been arguing that's the only reason he could lose. Polling suggests otherwise — including a series of recent surveys showing former Vice President Joe Biden narrowly but consistently ahead in the race for Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes. Trump carried them by a sliver of 1 percentage point last time, breaking a seven-election winning streak by Democratic nominees.</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 Elections Commission report detailed these cases of fraud, irregularities or violations (in Milwaukee and just eight of the state's other 71 counties) that municipal clerks in charge of election administration have sent to district attorneys in the past two years:</p><ul class="ee-ul"><li>7 election mailings (not ballots) addressed to non-existent voters.</li><li>4 people attempting to vote twice in person in the same election by going to two different locations.</li><li>4 people providing faulty information on voter registration applications. </li><li>3 people attempting to vote twice in the same election, using both mail ballots and either in-person early voting or the polls on Election Day. </li><li>1 felon attempting to register.</li></ul><p>The commission did not say how many of these reports led to criminal charges or were confirmed by police. And it's possible private citizens or groups reported additional cases to law enforcement.</p>
<p>The infinitesimally small accounting of possible cheating was the second such report this week to underscore the unfounded nature of the president's claims. Montana reported finding <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/montana-voter-registration" target="_blank">493 dead people on the rolls</a> statewide but not one case of their names being used to vote.</p>
<p>Republicans in control of Wisconsin Legislature often echo the president in saying election fraud is a real concern, and they use that threat to justify one of the strictest voter ID laws in the nation. And two Republican appointees to the commission said they were not molified by the fresh evidence. Although 1.8 million absentee votes have been tallied this year in the two preliminary elections, they said, the report should not be used to predict what will happen in November — when perhaps another 2 million mail votes will be cast.</p>
<p>"I think it's a much bigger risk than we've had in the past," Commissioner Dean Knudson said. "Even if it is a tiny, tiny fraction, it's still a serious infraction for voters to do that."</p>
<p>"We have no idea what's going to happen with this huge number," added Bob Spindell.</p>
<p>But Chairwoman Ann Jacobs, who was appointed by a Democrat, said the report was proof that the system of safeguards against electoral misbehavior "has worked extraordinarily well."</p>
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Timely mail vote wins, Greens lose in bipartisan Wisconsin top court ruling
Sep 15 2020
Profound election complications have been averted in Wisconsin thanks to its judicial system, an exception to the trend of court decisions making voting during the pandemic more problematic in presidential battlegrounds.
Wisconsin's Supreme Court, which pushed the state's election toward fresh chaos last week, reversed course on Monday. The justices ruled the Green Party's ticket will not appear on the ballot, meaning more than a million vote-by-mail packets can be distributed and won't be delayed by a massive and expensive reprinting — and that thousands more ballots already delivered won't need to be replaced.
While the decision was an unexpected judicial victory for the cause of a smooth and comprehensive election despite the coronavirus — the good-governance movement's overriding objective for the year — it was a defeat for a long-term goal of many of those same democracy reformers: breaking the two-party duopoly, which is behind so much governing dysfunction, by propping up independent and outsider campaigns.
<p>So far Green nominee Howie Hawkins, a retired Teamster, and running mate Angela Walker have qualified for the ballot in only about half the states, meaning they are mathematically out of the running. But their progressive presence is nonetheless concerning to Democrats, who worry the Greens could take enough votes away from Joe Biden in a few tossup states to provide President Trump a narrow path to victory. For the same reason, law firms and donors aligned with the GOP have been working to get the Greens more ballot access. </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>Green candidate Jill Stein took 31,000 votes in Wisconsin in 2016, when Trump secured the state's 10 electoral votes by less than 23,000 votes. </p><p>The high court ruled 4-3, with the justices deviating slightly from their usual lockstep party-line votes in election cases. One Republican, who had joined the all-GOP majority that <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/absentee-ballot-wisconsin" target="_self">called a halt to the ballot printing</a> Thursday, joined the three Democrats in deciding Hawkins and Walker had waited too long to file their appeal. The state Elections Commission denied them placement on the ballot four weeks ago because of address discrepancies on their petitions.</p><p>Reversing that decision now, the court said, would cause "confusion and undue damage to both the Wisconsin electors who want to vote and the other candidates in all the various races on the general election ballot."</p><p>The decision signaled a similar fate for another outsider appealing his exclusion from the ballot, rapper Kanye West.</p><p>The ruling also means that the local clerks who run elections across the state can meet Thursday's state deadline for beginning to send out mail-in ballots, and Saturday's federal deadline for sending them to Wisconsinites overseas or in the military. </p><p>Applications have already been received from three of every eight voters in the state — more than 1 million in total, smashing Wisconsin's records for absentee voting. At the time the court put a hold on the process, packets of ballots and return envelopes had already been prepared by local clerks to fulfill more than a third of those requests, at least 378,000, the Wisconsin Election Commission estimated. At least 75,000 had already gone out the door. </p><p>Local election administrators had flooded social media with worry that they would not be able to find printers, let alone the money to pay them, had the high court ordered all new ballots that included the Hawkins-Walker ticket.</p><p>Monday was also the first day when local officials in another battleground, Pennsylvania, would normally be allowed to send out absentee ballots. But they could not, the state said, until there's resolution of lawsuit in which the Democrats are arguing against putting the Green candidates on the ballot. They will also be left off the ballot in Montana after Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan denied their appeal Monday night.</p><p>The surprise vote on the Wisconsin Supreme Court came from Brian Hagedorn, who had been counsel to the previous governor, Republican Scott Walker.</p><p>While he unexpectedly reversed the course of what had looked, as recently as Thursday, like a totally partisan legal dispute, two other court decisions with partisan overtones that have restricted voting in other swing states in the past week look highly unlikely to be reversed in the seven weeks before Election Day.</p><p>A federal appeals court ruled Friday that an estimated 774,000 Floridians who have completed felony sentences will have to pay fines and fees before being allowed to vote. The decision reversed <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/voting/florida-felon-voting-rights-2646079503" target="_self">a lower court ruling</a> that said the state's law to that effect, enacted after a referendum in 2018 returned the franchise to most people with serious criminal convictions, was akin to an unconstitutional poll tax. </p><p>And another federal appeals court on Thursday upheld a state law in Texas that allows no-excuse voting only for people older than 65, which the Democratic Party argues is illegal age dicrimination against younger voters.</p>
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