Keep mail ballots legit: Postmarks prove the votes are timely |
When the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court this morning hear a case on deadlines for mail ballots they should use common sense: All that matters is when a ballot is cast by the voter for a fair and accurate election, not when the ballot is received and counted. Therefore, existing state laws allowing for ballots that arrive after Election Day, but are postmarked earlier, should remain valid and those ballots should be counted.
It will disappoint Donald Trump, who doesn’t want any ballot that arrives after Election Day to count, but the justices have disappointed him before.
A majority of states, 28, allow time after Election Day for mail ballots from military voters and overseas voters to make their way back from bases and ships and foreign locations. And half of those states permit any mail ballots to be received after Election Day and counted if they bear a postmark dated up through Election Day, but not afterward. The amount of leeway ranges from 21 days (in Washington state) to one day (in Texas). New York has a seven-day rule, as does California.
Regardless of how many days are permitted, the context is the same for all of them: The ballots inside the postmarked envelopes were cast by Election Day, which is what federal law and the laws of the states require.
Congressional and presidential elections are set as the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Voting after Election Day isn’t allowed anywhere, but in all these states, whether military ballots or overseas voters or regular folks using the mail, postal votes were cast on Election Day or earlier. It is just a matter of transporting the sealed and secret ballots back to the election officials to be opened, verified and tabulated.
The state of Mississippi was sued by the Republican National Committee to knock out its law. Mississippi won at trial, but lost on appeal, where the court panel oddly decided that ballots must be received by Election Day, which goes against more than a century of precedent and logic. Now it will be settled by the Supremes.
Why should when the ballots are received matter? If say, ballots were received via the Post Office during the late afternoon on Election Day and held until the next morning to count, is that OK? It should be. How about waiting two days? It makes no difference as those are valid ballots. The same should go for a ballot that arrives a few hours later, on Wednesday.
Or take the case that a ballot is voted and mailed a full week early, but the mail is slow and the ballot doesn’t get there until the Wednesday after the election, why should that soldier or citizen be penalized?
The postmark is proof of when the ballot came into possession of the Post Office and left the hands of the voter. We trust election officials to protect and safely handle ballots. Why shouldn’t that same trust apply to the Post Office, even if it takes a few days for them to deliver the ballot?
Despite what Trump says, no one is rigging elections by having properly postmarked ballots count. The court should rule 9-0 in favor of the states.