Jim Bratten
On September 22, Quinn Scanlan of ABC News gave us a run-down on how states changed voting rules over the summer to accommodate the difficulties of voting during the “coronavirus pandemic.”
He wrote, “Thanks to legal challenges from voting rights advocates, some states that typically require ballots to be received by polls closing time will accept ballots postmarked by Election Day for the 2020 election.
“In the three ‘Blue Wall’ states the president won in 2016 – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – judges have recently issued rulings that extend the deadline for mail ballots to be received.
“In Michigan, a court of claims judge ordered clerks to accept ballots that are postmarked by Nov. 2 and received within 14 days of the election, the deadline for results to be certified. These ballots have to be counted as provisional ballots. In Wisconsin, a U.S. district judge ruled that ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 can be counted as long as they are received by Nov. 9.
“And in Pennsylvania, not only will mailed ballots that are postmarked on or before 8 p.m. on Election Day and received by 5 p.m. the Friday after it be counted, due to a ruling from the state Supreme Court, but any ballots that arrive within that time frame without a postmark, or with an unreadable postmark, will be presumed to have been sent before the cutoff point, unless evidence indicates otherwise.
“In Minnesota, ballots postmarked by Election Day and received within a week after the election will be counted. Both Massachusetts and Kentucky are allowing postmarked ballots received by Nov. 6 to be counted.
“…In Georgia, a federal judge ruled that ballots postmarked by Election Day will count if election officials get them by the third day after the election, but the secretary of state, the Republican National Committee and the Georgia Republican Party are challenging this order in court.”
If a judge made the decision to alter any state’s election laws, their actions were unconstitutional – illegal. Where were the Republican legislators in these states?
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