Tag Archives: Absentee Voting

Turnout was relatively high on the first day of in-person early voting in Georgia’s primary, but even more people voted absentee Monday amid the coronavirus pandemic. Over 15,000 voters, many of them wearing masks, cast their ballots at early voting locations, according to state election data.That’s a larger turnout than on the first days of in-person voting for primaries in 2016 and 2018, but slightly lower than the start of early voting for this year’s presidential primary on March 2.Still, most Georgians preferred to vote remotely, with over 26,000 absentee ballots received by county election offices Monday. The combination of voting options could result in significant participation in the combined presidential and general primary. A record 1.46 million voters have requested absentee ballots, and many more will cast their ballots during three weeks of early voting and on election day June 9. Overall, nearly 415,000 people have voted so far, including 400,000 who submitted absentee-by-mail ballots. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is encouraging people to vote absentee and avoid human contact, but they can also choose to vote in person.

Idaho: Secretary of State working with Boise cybersecurity company on absentee election security | Rachel Spacek/Idaho Press

The Idaho Secretary of State’s Office is working with a Boise-based cybersecurity company to track election security-related issues during the state’s unprecedented absentee ballot election. According to a press release, PlexTrac will allow the secretary of state election cybersecurity team to collaborate with every county in the state about any election security issues that come up. Tuesday, the day of the primary election, was the last day for voters to request a ballot. Completed ballots are due June 2, when results will be released. Foster Cronyn, deputy secretary of state, said the office has implemented several tools over previous election years that monitor and report on election security. “PlexTrac consolidates this very complex information into an organized, actionable report for our cyber security analysts,” Cronyn said. “In previous elections, we have had to manually review these reports and look for patterns. Although this election is absentee ballot only, these are still requested, tallied and reported on using large online computing systems. PlexTrac aggregates security reports from these systems.”

Massachusetts: Vote-By-Mail Forces Grow Anxious About Timeline, Renew Push For Action On Beacon Hill | Chris Lisinski/WBUR

Legislation outlining vote-by-mail procedures for the September and November elections in Massachusetts “absolutely cannot wait another month,” electoral reform advocates said Wednesday as they renewed their push for action on Beacon Hill. Under normal circumstances, local departments need several months to prepare fully for major statewide elections, particularly in a presidential year. But with the COVID-19 pandemic upending most aspects of public life — and with voters broadly supporting mail-in ballots — reform advocates argued it is critical for lawmakers to quickly find consensus on the myriad proposals before them. The Sept. 1 primary is less than four months away, and Secretary of State William Galvin wants to begin printing ballots as soon as two weeks from Tuesday. “Election officials need to prepare for the fall, and they need to do it as soon as possible,” said Common Cause Massachusetts Executive Director Pam Wilmot during a virtual press conference alongside about a dozen groups. “We’ll see what the Legislature decides, but time is absolutely of the essence and it needs to go now.”

Louisiana: House panel refuses expanded vote by mail | Catherine Hunt/The Advocate

A Louisiana House committee Tuesday rejected legislation that would have allowed all registered voters to vote by mail in all state elections, including this fall’s presidential contest. More voters than normal can cast mail-in ballots in 33 states and Washington, D.C., this year to reduce health risks from the coronavirus. Some states, such as Colorado, Oregon and Washington, rely entirely on mail-in ballots for all their elections. Red states like Wyoming, Montana, Utah and Alaska also have decided to conduct their presidential primaries this year entirely through mail ballots. Michigan, a political swing state, announced Tuesday that it would send mail-in ballots to all its voters for the fall election. New Orleans Democratic Rep. Mandie Landry’s House Bill 419 would not mandate voting by mail but simply allow it to be used more broadly. Before the House and Governmental Affairs committee, the measure failed in a party-line, 9-5 vote.

Maryland: After vendor wrongly said Baltimore’s ballots were on the way, officials are scrambling to get them | Emily Opilo/Baltimore Sun

An out-of-state vendor failed to mail hundreds of thousands of ballots to Baltimore voters for nearly a week despite assuring Maryland they were on the way, officials revealed Tuesday amid growing concerns over administration of the June 2 primary. U.S. Postal Service trucks have been driving overnight shifts since officials learned of the problem Sunday, ferrying ballots from Minnesota to Maryland where they are placed into the local mail stream, said Nikki Charlson, deputy administrator of the Maryland Board of Elections. “We have significant unanswered questions about the process, and after the election, we will require a full accounting with a particular focus on Baltimore City ballots,” Charlson said. She said the state had delivered necessary voter information to the company in time for ballots to be mailed more than a week ago. “We are extremely disappointed that the vendor has failed to deliver according to the schedule,” Charlson said.

Michigan: All voters to get absentee ballot applications in mail | Todd Spangler/Detroit Free Press

Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said Tuesday all of Michigan’s 7.7 million registered voters will be mailed absentee ballot applications so they can take part in elections in August and November without the risk of in-person voting if they choose to do so. Benson, in a move likely to anger some Republicans and potentially lead to a court battle, said the threat posed by the spread of coronavirus, which has already killed 4,915 Michiganders since March but has been on the decline in recent weeks, is still too great to consider having people go en masse to the polls to vote in the Aug. 4 and Nov. 3 elections. Benson is a Democrat. “By mailing applications we have ensured that no Michigander has to choose between their health and their right to vote,” Benson said. She noted that in 50 local elections held across the state on May 5, turnout was up significantly from other years and that the vast majority of voters cast absentee ballots by mail or through a drop box. “We know from the elections that took place this month that during the pandemic Michiganders want to safely vote,” she said.

Missouri: Judge Rejects Bid for Widespread Absentee Voting | Joe Harris/Courthouse News

A lawsuit seeking to allow absentee voting for all eligible Missourians in light of the Covid-19 crisis was dismissed by a state judge who found that the complaint asked for measures that went beyond concerns over the pandemic. “The court takes very seriously the health concerns regarding the Covid-19 pandemic that plaintiffs allege in their petition, but the relief plaintiffs seek is not limited to Covid-19 and goes far beyond the health concerns they raise,” Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem wrote in his opinion Tuesday. He continued, “Plaintiffs are seeking a radical and permanent transformation of Missouri voting practices without the authorization of the Legislature.” The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit, has appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court. “We don’t think the case should have been dismissed,” ACLU lawyer Tony Rothert said in an interview. “But, on the other hand, we all knew this was going to a Missouri Supreme Court resolution and this will get it there faster.”

Minnesota: League of Women Voters challenges absentee voting witness rule | By Stephen Montemayor/Minneapolis Star Tribune

Minnesota’s witness requirement for absentee ballots faces a second legal challenge in a lawsuit filed Tuesday by the League of Women Voters asking a judge to let voters concerned about COVID-19 cast absentee ballots without witness signatures. The lawsuit, filed against Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, follows a similar state court lawsuit filed last week by the Minnesota Alliance for Retired Americans Educational Fund. Both cases come as Simon and other state election officials race to prepare for an expected surge in absentee voting this year. “Minnesota consistently has the highest voter turnout in the nation, with many safeguards in place to ensure election integrity,” said Michelle Witte, executive director at the League of Women Voters Minnesota. “Making this small change to our witness requirements during this global pandemic will not damage that integrity — it will only make our elections stronger by ensuring that all voters have as few barriers as possible to exercise their constitutional right.”

Missouri: Lawsuit for absentee voting amid virus appealed | Summer Ballentine/Associated Press

Civil rights groups on Tuesday appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court after a local judge dismissed their lawsuit seeking to allow all Missourians to vote absentee in upcoming elections to help reduce the risk of catching or spreading the coronavirus. The lawsuit was filed in Jefferson City by the ACLU of Missouri and the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition on behalf of the NAACP, the League of Women Voters and several residents. It claims that requiring voters to appear at traditional polling places during the pandemic puts lives at risk. Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem in a Monday judgment tossed the lawsuit, writing that the civil rights groups who sued were asking for widespread absentee voting for all future elections regardless of whether COVID-19 is still around. Beetem wrote that the plaintiffs sought “radical and permanent transformation of Missouri voting practices without the authorization of the Legislature.” Voters currently can request absentee ballots only if they provide an excuse for why they can’t vote in person. Illness is one option, but the law isn’t explicit on whether the illness excuse covers healthy voters concerned about catching or spreading COVID-19.

New Jersey: Officials disqualify 19% of votes cast in Paterson | Joe Malinconico/Paterson Press

A total of 3,190 mail-in ballots – about 19 percent of those submitted – have been disqualified in the hotly-contested elections for Paterson’s six ward seats on the City Council, officials said on Wednesday. The Passaic County Board of Elections previously had announced that it decided not to count about 800 ballots because they allegedly were improperly bundled in mailboxes and would be turned over to law enforcement authorities for an investigation of potential irregularities. But the election board ended up disqualifying more than 2,300 additional votes during its ballot-by-ballot review of the documents. Keith Furlong, spokesman for Passaic County government, attributed the additional disqualifications to the election board’s annual practice of checking the signatures on the ballots against those on file for voters. “It’s part of the normal process,” Furlong said. The massive number of disqualified ballots in an election already rife with allegations of fraud has political insiders predicting that several losing candidates would file legal challenges seeking to overturn the results.

New Jersey: State is arbitrarily throwing out thousands of mail-in ballots, lawsuit says | Blake Nelson/NJ.com

Ahead of a surge in mail-in ballots because of the coronavirus, New Jersey voting rights and social justice groups are suing to change how the state counts votes. In order to verify a ballot, election officials currently compare the signature on a ballot with the corresponding signature on the initial application, according to state law. That has led “untrained” staff to arbitrarily throw out thousands of votes without due process, according to a lawsuit filed Monday by a resident with Parkinson’s disease, who said his shaking hand has fundamentally altered how he signs his name. “When you think about how much a signature can change over the years, or how a disability can impact one’s handwriting, it is clear that this is unacceptable,” Ryan Haygood, president of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, said in a statement. The institute co-filed the complaint in U.S. District Court of New Jersey on behalf of the resident with Parkinson’s and the state chapters of the League of Women Voters and the NAACP.

New Jersey: Close Results In Paterson Vote Plagued By Fraud Claims; Over 3K Ballots Seemingly Set Aside | Jonathan Dienst/NBC

mid widespread vote-by-mail fraud allegations in the Paterson city council election, one race was apparently decided by just 8 votes. Incumbent Shahin Khalique defeated Mohammed Akhtaruzzaman — 1,729 votes to 1,721. And long-time council member William McKoy lost by 245 votes to challenger Alex Mendez. A Passaic County spokesman said 16,747 vote-by-mail ballots were received, but the county’s official results page shows 13,557 votes were counted — a difference of 3,190 votes. Those thousands of ballots not counted would represent nearly one in five of all votes cast, or 19 percent. The Board of Elections previously announced about 800 votes would be set aside and not counted amid charges they were found improperly bundled in mailboxes in Paterson as well as at a drop box in nearby Haledon.

Texas: Federal judge says Texas voters can vote by mail during coronavirus | Alexa Ura/The Texas Tribune

A federal judge opened a path for a massive expansion in absentee voting in Texas by ordering Tuesday that all state voters, regardless of age, qualify for mail-in ballots during the coronavirus pandemic. Days after a two-hour preliminary injunction hearing in San Antonio, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery agreed with individual Texas voters and the Texas Democratic Party that voters would face irreparable harm if existing age eligibility rules for voting by mail remain in place for elections held while the coronavirus remains in wide circulation. Under his order, which the Texas attorney general said he would immediately appeal, voters under the age of 65 who would ordinarily not qualify for mail-in ballots would now be eligible. Biery’s ruling covers Texas voters “who seek to vote by mail to avoid transmission of the virus.” In a lengthy order, which he opened by quoting the preamble to the Declaration of Independence, Biery said he had concerns for the health and safety of voters and stated the right to vote “should not be elusively based on the whims of nature.”

Oklahoma: Democratic groups challenge absentee voting laws | Carmen Forman/The Oklahoman

The Oklahoma Democratic Party is suing the state Election Board over several voting procedures they say “severely burden” the right of Oklahomans to vote during the COVID-19 pandemic. The state party and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee are asking a federal judge to declare several of Oklahoma’s voting provisions unconstitutional. In the lawsuit filed this week, the groups ask a judge to block the state from enforcing the state’s notary requirement so long as absentee voters have signed their ballot affidavit. The lawsuit calls the notary requirement or the alternative requirement that voters must submit a copy of an identification card with their absentee ballot, “onerous and unnecessarily burdensome.” Oklahoma’s GOP-controlled Legislature and Gov. Kevin Stitt recently reinstated the state’s notary requirement for absentee ballots. They also added some provisions to state law that make some exceptions if Oklahoma is in a state of emergency before upcoming elections, which likely will apply to the June 30 primary.

Editorials: Texas Attorney General Paxton’s cynical ploy lost in the mail as Texas voters prevail | Houston Chronicle

Stop us if you’ve heard this one: what’s the difference between the novel coronavirus and the voter fraud rate in Texas? Give up? They’re both microscopic, but if a federal ruling is allowed to stand, only one can get you killed. U.S. District Judge Fred Biery had ruled Tuesday that all Texans will be able to vote by mail during the pandemic. On Wednesday afternoon, however, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton convinced a three-judge panel of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to block Biery’s ruling temporarily. Now the plaintiffs in the case have until Thursday to tell the appeals court why it shouldn’t agree to Paxton’s demand that the ruling be stayed until the court can issue a ruling on the appeal his office filed earlier in the day. It’s the latest development in a series of court battles between those who would prioritize voter health over a cynical ruse to limit voter access in the name of “election security.”

Wisconsin: Glitches, mailing problems mar absentee voting in Wisconsin | Patrick Marley/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Nearly 2,700 absentee ballots in Milwaukee were not sent and about 1,600 in the Fox Valley were not processed because of computer glitches and mailing problems, according to the most comprehensive account yet of what went wrong in the April 7 election. In Milwaukee, 2,693 voters were not sent absentee ballots after technical issues marred their production on March 22 and March 23, according to a report by the Wisconsin Elections Commission. About half of those people eventually voted, either with replacement absentee ballots or at the polls. The others did not vote. The election for a seat on the state Supreme Court, the presidential primary and a host of local offices, put a global spotlight on Wisconsin for holding an election in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. The report highlights the kind of difficulties Wisconsin and other states could face in the November presidential election. A separate problem emerged when about 1,600 ballots for the Appleton and Oshkosh areas were found at a mail processing center the day after the election. It was not clear in the report if the ballots were on their way to voters or on their way back to clerks when they were found. Either way, they were discovered too late to be counted.

Wisconsin: Election officials show support for sending voters absentee ballot forms, but split on who should get them | Patrick Marley/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin election officials inched toward sending absentee ballot request forms to voters Wednesday, but they put off a decision after Republicans and Democrats split on how many people should get the ballot applications. Democrats on the Wisconsin Elections Commission want to send the applications to about 2.7 million people, the vast majority of the state’s registered voters. The Republican chairman agreed ballot applications should be sent out. But he doesn’t want to send them to those who appear likely to have previously voted by mail or who live in communities that are already planning to mail absentee ballot forms to their residents. That would result in ballots going to 1.7 million or fewer people. The commission consists of three Republicans and three Democrats. It was unclear Wednesday if the commissioners could reach a deal on the issue when they meet again in about a week. The commission is not considering the mass mailing of actual ballots. Rather, it is weighing sending applications that voters could fill out and return with a copy of a photo ID. Those voters would then be sent an absentee ballot.

National: Democrats try again with sweeping mail voting requirements | Nicholas Riccardi/Associated Press

Despite an earlier failed attempt, Democrats tried again Friday to adopt a massive expansion of voting by mail during the coronavirus outbreak, including $3.6 billion in funding for states to adjust their election systems to deal with the pandemic. The money was included in a $3 trillion coronavirus response bill that was passed Friday by the Democratic-led House. But it has no chance of moving forward. The Republican-led Senate opposes the bill, and the White House has vowed to veto it. The most controversial aspect of the election funding section of the bill is another round of mandates that Democrats wish to place on states to ensure they have fair and safe elections at a time when crowded polling stations are a potential health risk. The bill would require states to end requirements that voters get a legal excuse to request an absentee ballot, mandate 15 days of early voting and order states to mail a ballot to every voter during emergencies. The Senate blocked similar requirements in a coronavirus relief bill in March.

National: Suits filed across US challenging mail-in voting obstacles | Jacob Dougherty/JURIST

With an expected increase in mail-in voting during the COVID-19 pandemic, voter rights advocates have filed lawsuits across the country challenging existing obstacles in states’ mail-in voting procedures. Challenges to mail-in voter restrictions have been filed in Tennessee, Texas, Minnesota, Georgia and North Carolina, among others. Some challenges primarily address the general restrictions states have placed on who can receive a mail-in ballot. For example, in Texas, according to Texas Election Code § 82.002, “a qualified voter is eligible for early voting by mail if the voter has a sickness or physical condition that prevents the voter from appearing at the polling place on election day.” The plaintiffs in the federal court case contend that all voters qualify for mail-in voting under this provision. In Tennessee, the same argument is being made for the state’s Excuse Requirement, which allows an “excuse,” or reason for a mail-in ballot, for voters who are “hospitalized, ill or physically disabled, and because of such condition, [are] unable to appear at [their] polling place on election day.”

National: Voting During Coronavirus: Will We Have Universal Vote-by-Mail by November? | Emilie Mutert/NBC

The experts are clear: The coronavirus will be here through the summer and will stick around through November’s general election. An American presidential election has never been postponed or canceled, but with warnings from health officials discouraging crowds – which are generally unavoidable at polling places – officials are in many cases already working to ensure they have the extra resources needed to implement vote-by-mail on an expanded scale. “It’s either going to be vote-by-mail or nothing if we have to deal with a worst-case scenario,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who along with Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., is sponsoring an emergency bill to expand vote-by-mail, has said. Others say vote-by-mail would have to be part of a suite of responses, such as extended early in-person voting with crowd controls and “curbside voting,” which allows voters concerned about entering a polling place to return a ballot without leaving their car, NBC News reported.

Georgia: Emergency rule allows absentee ballots to be opened early| Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Election officials can begin opening absentee ballots eight days before Georgia’s June 9 primary, according to a State Election Board rule approved Monday to deal with a deluge of mailed-in ballots during the coronavirus pandemic. The board voted unanimously to pass the emergency rule, which will help election officials handle record numbers of absentee ballots. In previous elections, absentee ballots couldn’t be processed until election day.Even though ballots can be opened in advance, election results in some races might not be known for several days after the primary because of the time needed to count absentee ballots.It will take much longer to scan and count absentee ballots than it would on Georgia’s new in-person voting system, which combines touchscreens and printed-out paper ballots. So far, over 1.4 million voters have requested absentee ballots. Polls opened Monday for three weeks of in-person early voting. “For this once-in-a-lifetime unprecedented emergency, this regulation painstakingly attempts to balance transparency and security,” State Election Board member Matt Mashburn said during the meeting held via teleconference.

Maryland: Primary election ballots delayed in Baltimore because they’re mailed from out-of-state | Kate Amara/WBAL

Some registered voters in Baltimore City have yet to receive their mail-in ballot for Maryland’s presidential primary on June 2. Maryland elections officials said the ballots are in the mail. Because of the coronavirus, the election is designed to be an all vote-by-mail election. Baltimore’s ballots didn’t get sent on May 8 as elections officials had been saying, but rather, a week later on May 15. Elections administrators confirmed the delay Sunday. Baltimore City Council President Brandon Scott, who’s also a candidate for mayor, said he has yet to receive a ballot. “Right, but for me, it’s much bigger than me. It’s not that just I didn’t get it — all of my neighbors didn’t get it. All of my family didn’t get it,” Scott said. “Look, it’s just unacceptable, it’s just unacceptable. If they knew that, they should have made us aware.” But elections officials said the print shops are out-of-state. The ballots were printed in Minnesota, Florida and Ohio, and mailed to Marylanders from there.

Pennsylvania: Philadelphia coronavirus food boxes to include primary absentee ballot applications | Jonathan Lai,/Philadelphia Inquirer

Philadelphia elections officials are distributing 92,000 absentee ballot applications and promotional fliers in food boxes given out across the city, an effort to reach low-income voters who they fear will risk their health to vote in person or skip voting altogether. “We have a responsibility,” said Lisa Deeley, chair of the Philadelphia Board of City Commissioners, which oversees elections. The commissioners gave 32,000 packets to the city for its food boxes, 40,000 to the Philadelphia School District, and 20,000 to the nonprofit Share Food Program. Data show voters in low-income neighborhoods are requesting mail ballots at disproportionately low rates. That suggests those voters will either show up in person at disproportionate rates or not vote at all. And the commissioners have cut the number of polling places by 77% because of the coronavirus, meaning voters will be gathered at fewer locations than normal, likely increasing crowding and health risks. Elected officials, community organizations, voting rights activists, and political campaigns have urged people to vote by mail instead, but their work has been made harder by the pandemic, Deeley said.

Missouri: GOP pushes bill that would force some to risk their health to vote | Dan Desai Martin/The American Independent

Voting rights advocates slammed new legislation passed in the Missouri House of Representatives because it would force voters to continue to have absentee ballots notarized before they are submitted. The new GOP-backed legislation would allow any registered voter in the state to request an absentee ballot for any reason, replacing the current requirement that provides only six approved reasons to request one. But Republican lawmakers refused to remove the provision in current Missouri law that requires that absentee ballots be notarized, saying that it is needed to combat voter fraud. In addition, the legislation requires voters to request an absentee ballot either in person or by mail. They cannot do so online or by email. Voting rights groups criticized the new rules. “Voting by mail should be safe and accessible, and having voters find and be in contact with a notary places an undue burden on voters and undermines public health during a global pandemic,” said Patrick Burgwinkle, a spokesperson for Let America Vote, in an email on Friday.

Pennsylvania: State Supreme Court dismisses lawsuit to extend absentee ballot deadlines because of coronavirus | Jonathan Lai/Philadelphia Inquirer

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a lawsuit brought by advocates who sought to extend the state’s absentee ballot deadlines this year because of the coronavirus pandemic. That leaves in place the current election law, which requires mail ballots to be received by election officials by 8 p.m. on an election day regardless of when voters put them in the mail. A similar lawsuit over absentee ballot deadlines, backed by national Democrats, is pending in a state court. That case seeks a variety of changes, including an election day postmark deadline. The advocacy groups sued the state last month, saying the deadlines are generally not unconstitutional, but are this year because the pandemic is leading to delays in mail delivery and slower processing of absentee ballot requests. The plaintiffs are Suzanne Erb, chair of the Disability Rights Pennsylvania board; Disability Rights Pennsylvania; the Barristers’ Association of Philadelphia; SeniorLAW Center; and SEAMAAC. They asked the court to allow ballots to be counted if they are postmarked by election day and received within a week after the election, a change that would increase the likelihood last-minute ballots would arrive in time to be counted. State election officials agreed that extending mail ballot deadlines could be a good idea, but argued it was inappropriate for that to come through a court order. The claims are simply too speculative, Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar and other officials said, so a change in policy should come from the legislature, not the courts.

Pennsylvania: Allegheny County doesn’t know how many duplicate ballots it mailed out | Julian Routh/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The manager of Allegheny County’s elections division said Friday he doesn’t know how many duplicate ballots were mailed out in recent weeks, but that duplicate mailings did occur, the problem is under control and he now has no concerns about the department’s ability to mail and count ballots for the June 2 primary. In a conference call with reporters, Dave Voye, who manages the division that’s had to process a massive influx of vote-by-mail applications and ballots as voters look for an alternative to in-person voting amid COVID-19, said the department started to notice there was a problem with duplicate ballots at the end of April. Several voters told the Post-Gazette this month that they had applied for a mail-in or absentee ballot and received more than one in the mail. The county released a statement on the issue Thursday, and said it was the result of a bug in the state’s voter registration system. “We figured it out and stopped it earlier this week,” Mr. Voye said, noting that the county was trying to process batches of mailing labels that were too large. The system was timing out and pushing the printed labels back into the queue to be printed again.

South Carolina: Absentee ballot deadline, witness rule argued in federal court | John Monk/The State

After more than three hours of legal arguments Friday, a federal judge is now set to decide whether, because of the dangers of COVID-19, to eliminate two of South Carolina’s strict requirements concerning absentee ballots for the upcoming June 9 primary. “We are going to do our best to turn this around quickly because we know there’s a lot at stake for all the people involved,” said U.S. District Judge Michelle Childs to a more than dozen lawyers in a near empty courtroom and on a remote video hookup. There are two questions before Childs:

Whether to set aside the state legal requirement that a voter’s absentee ballot envelope must contain the signature and address of a witness to the voter’s ballot.

Whether to allow mailed-in ballots to still be counted if they reach elections officials after 7 p.m. on the day of an election. Currently, mailed-in absentee ballots must get to elections officials by that time or they aren’t counted.

Tennessee: ACLU files suit against Tennessee urging mail-in ballots for all voters in 2020 elections | Mariah Timms/Nashville Tennessean

Tennessee may need to make absentee voting available to all eligible voters by the August primary election, if a lawsuit filed Friday against the state is successful. The American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee filed the suit on behalf of several residents who believe their health conditions would make voting during the COVID-19 pandemic a threat to their safety. Currently, eligible voters must provide a qualifying excuse as to why they need to vote by mail, the ACLU said. The suit pushes the state to expand those requirements and allow all eligible voters to vote by absentee ballot. “No one should be forced to choose between their health and their vote. Tennessee can simultaneously keep the public safe and protect democracy, but is refusing to do so. Eliminating the excuse requirement during COVID-19 is a common-sense solution that protects people’s health and their right to vote, which is why many other states have already made vote by mail and absentee voting available,” Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, said in a release. Fear of contracting the coronavirus doesn’t meet the criteria to vote by mail due to illness in Tennessee, state officials said Tuesday. Even so, officials recommended preparing as though all 1.4 million registered voters who are at least 60 will cast ballots by mail in the August primary election.

Texas: State Supreme Court pauses expansion of voting by mail during coronavirus | Alexa Ura/The Texas Tribune