Supreme Ct. tackles vote-by-mail late ballots

By Taxpayers Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

Today, the United States Supreme Court takes on a key vote-by-mail rule that impacts Oregon and a dozen other states.

The issue is with rules allowing mail ballots to be received after election day if they are postmarked.  In Oregon, ballots can arrive up to 7 days after an election.   This comes as the Post Office is declaring more mail as delayed.  This has turned our elections into a murky mess, which only invites fraud, colossal mistakes, and further distrust among the public.

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board makes this keen observation:

“In 2024 the National Association of Secretaries of State complained to the USPS that “officials in multiple states report receiving anywhere from dozens to hundreds of ballots 10 or more days after postmark.”Another flub is when ballots show up without any legible postmarks. Sometimes judges rule that if they arrive two or three days after Election Day, it can be simply presumed they were mailed on time.In a close election, the winner might turn on these kinds of postal hiccups and the ensuing litigation. Mississippi’s definition, that a vote is “cast” when it’s given to the USPS, creates a Schrödinger’s ballot box: The state might say the election is finished, but some candidate’s political career could be both alive and dead, depending on how much mail gets misdelivered that week or whether the postmark process malfunctioned.By the way, what makes the USPS so special? Mississippi’s position lacks a limiting principle, as the challengers to its late-ballot law explain. “A State could say that a ballot is timely cast once the voter hands it over to a family member or a party operative to deliver,” the Republican National Committee argues in its brief. Could states that allow ballot harvesting offer those crews a two-day grace period, as long as they quit collecting on Election Day?”

An American Enterprise Institute article featured this insight:

“Some states now allow a voter to fix an error on a ballot envelope if, for example, the voter forgot to sign the envelope, or if the signature does not match a signature on file. Some states allow voters to come in after the election to fix the issue. Why is this problematic? Proponents of a post-election deadline make the argument that ballots post-marked by election day are cast by the date of the post-mark, as the ballot is then out of the voter’s hands. But in the case of curing ballots after the election, voters have the ability to choose to come in to fix their ballots or decide not to pursue curing.Further evidence that this practice cuts against the idea that the ballot was cast by Election Day is the fact that political parties and groups engage in a full-out campaign to contact voters to get them to come in to cure their ballots. And they use all of the sophisticated data targeting techniques to contact and cajole the “right voters,” to cure their ballots. With all of the post-election campaigning, it is hard to believe that all ballots were truly cast by Election Day.”

— Was this article helpful?  If yes, please contribute online at OregonWatchdog.com (learn about a Charitable Tax Deduction or Political Tax Credit options to promote liberty).