Submitted by: P McMillan
More than 1 million people could lose their vote on Nov. 3. That’s the best-case scenario
‘Will mail-in voting decide America’s next president?
Many states are planning on drastically different elections this year and mail-in ballots could be a big game changer.
Not everyone is equally likely to lose their vote. In 2016, rejected absentee ballots fell along racial, ethnic and wealth divides. Asian-Americans in California’s Santa Clara County, New York City voters in largely Black and Hispanic boroughs and Arizona voters in counties with the lowest household incomes were all more likely to have their absentee votes jettisoned in the past presidential election.
In some counties, rejected votes in November will be a small fraction of an estimated 70 million absentee ballots cast nationwide. However, even “infrequent problems could nevertheless wind up affecting substantial numbers of people,” said Michael Morley, an election law expert and assistant professor at Florida State University’s College of Law.“Assume that everything goes perfectly 99.8% of the time,” Morley said. “Well, .02% of 70 million winds up being an awful lot of people.”
More than 1 million people could lose their vote on Nov. 3. That’s the best-case scenario
USA TODAY.com
https://www.usatoday.com/in-
Rejected ballots in the 2020 election battle between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden could become the post-election focus.
In a normal election year in any given state, hundreds or even thousands of absentee ballots get tossed for everything from late postmarks to open envelopes.
North Carolina rejected 546 ballots for missing witness signatures in the 2012 presidential race. Virginia tossed 216 ballots in the 2018 midterms because they arrived in an unofficial envelope. Arizona discarded 1,516 ballots for nonmatching signatures the same year.
The 2020 presidential election will not be normal.
Absentee ballot rejections this November are projected to reach historic levels, risking widespread disenfranchisement of minority voters and the credibility of election results, a USA TODAY, Columbia Journalism Investigations and PBS series FRONTLINE investigation found.
At least 1.03 million absentee ballots could be tossed if half of the nation votes by mail. Discarded votes jump to 1.55 million if 75% of the country votes absentee. In the latter scenario, more than 185,000 votes could be lost in Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – states considered key to capturing the White House.
A forklift operator loads absentee ballots for mailing on Sept. 3, 2020, in Raleigh, North Carolina.
These numbers are conservative and based on 2016 rejection rates, when fewer voters submitted absentee ballots. Record numbers of voters will be voting absentee for the first time in 2020, and voters new to vote-by-mail are at greater risk of making mistakes. If errors push the rejection rate up just 2%, about 2.15 million votes would be cast aside – roughly the population of New Mexico.
The stakes could not be higher.
Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania rejected about 60,000 votes in primaries earlier this year, said Amherst College law professor Lawrence Douglas, only a few thousand votes shy of President Donald Trump’s margin of victory in those states in 2016.
“A result like this in November could cast doubt on who actually carried the key swing states, with the overall election hanging in the balance,” said Douglas, who added that such an outcome could trigger “a chaotic welter of lawsuits and clashing conspiracy theories.”
President Donald Trump, during the first presidential debate against Democratic nominee Joe Biden, made the unproven claim that discarded ballots are evidence that voter fraud will undermine the 2020 election.
Scott Olson, Getty Images
CJI projects the three states could discard 44,499 to 66,749 votes in the presidential election.
Confusion over rules and logistical problems with mail could create “a toxic brew” in close races, said attorney Jarret Berg, co-founder of VoteEarlyNY, a nonprofit providing information on how to vote in New York. “I’m concerned about ideological bloodbath,” Berg said.
Will mail-in voting decide America’s next president?
Many states are planning on drastically different elections this year and mail-in ballots could be a big game changer.
Not everyone is equally likely to lose their vote. In 2016, rejected absentee ballots fell along racial, ethnic and wealth divides. Asian-Americans in California’s Santa Clara County, New York City voters in largely Black and Hispanic boroughs and Arizona voters in counties with the lowest household incomes were all more likely to have their absentee votes jettisoned in the past presidential election.
In some counties, rejected votes in November will be a small fraction of an estimated 70 million absentee ballots cast nationwide. However, even “infrequent problems could nevertheless wind up affecting substantial numbers of people,” said Michael Morley, an election law expert and assistant professor at Florida State University’s College of Law.
“Assume that everything goes perfectly 99.8% of the time,” Morley said. “Well, .02% of 70 million winds up being an awful lot of people.”
In New Hampshire, projected absentee ballot rejections are almost 12 times the vote margin of victory that sent Democrat Maggie Hassan to the U.S. Senate in 2016. In North Carolina, Roy Cooper, also a Democrat, won the governor’s seat by just over 10,000 votes – more than 8 times that number could be lost to absentee rejections this November.
Discarded ballots don’t automatically give either party an edge, as President Donald Trump has suggested. It’s true that in certain states, the number of discarded ballots could match or top Trump’s margin of victory in 2016. In Michigan, for example, 11,139 to 16,709 absentee votes could be rejected in the battleground state he won in 2016 by 10,704 votes.
But USA TODAY/CJI also projects 182,000 to 273,000 more votes could be tossed this year in counties won by Democrats during the 2016 presidential election than in counties won by the GOP.
The coming wave of absentee ballot rejections is not a result of voter fraud, USA TODAY/CJI found, but instead the byproduct of 200 million eligible voters navigating an often confusing voting process where simple mistakes can cost a vote. Further, the rules are shifting: Lawsuits are driving down-to-the-wire changes on how to vote by mail, heightening the risk that even well-informed absentee voters will turn in a defective ballot.
For months, the political groundwork has been laid to challenge vote-by-mail results. Attorney General William Barr in September wrongly claimed that 1,700 mail ballots had been fraudulently cast in Texas. Trump has decried absentee votes as fraudulent and rigged against him. In September, Trump refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power should he lose the election, citing his belief in widespread absentee ballot fraud.
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