Republican officials and candidates in at least three battleground states are pushing to disqualify thousands of mail ballots after urging their own supporters to vote on Election Day, in what critics are calling a concerted attempt at partisan voter suppression.
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In Pennsylvania, the state Supreme Court
has agreed with the Republican National Committee that election officials should not count ballots on which the voter neglected to put a date on the outer envelope — even in cases when the ballots arrive before Election Day. Thousands of ballots have been set aside as a result, enough to swing a close race.
In Michigan, Kristina Karamo, the Republican nominee for secretary of state,
sued the top election official in Detroit last month, seeking to toss absentee ballots not cast in person with an ID, even though that runs contrary to state requirements. When asked in a recent court hearing, Karamo’s lawyer declined to say why the suit targets Detroit, a heavily Democratic, majority-Black city, and not the entire state.
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And in Wisconsin, Republicans
won a court ruling that will prevent some mail ballots from being counted when the required witness address is not complete.
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Over the past two years, Republicans have waged a sustained campaign against alleged voter fraud. Experts say the litigation — which could significantly affect Tuesday’s vote — represents a parallel strategy of suing to disqualify mail ballots based on technicalities. While the rejections may have some basis in state law, experts say they appear to go against a principle, enshrined in federal law, of not disenfranchising voters for minor errors.
The suits coincide with a systematic attempt by Republicans — led by former president Donald Trump — to persuade GOP voters to cast their ballots only on Election Day. Critics argue that the overall purpose is to separate Republicans and Democrats by method of voting and then to use lawsuits to void mail ballots that are disproportionately Democratic.
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“They’re looking for every advantage they can get, and they’ve calculated that this is a way that they can win more seats,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for Common Cause, a nonpartisan democracy advocacy organization. “Research has shown that absentee ballots are more likely to be discarded if they are voted by young people and people of color, which are not generally seen as the Republican base.”
Albert said legal battles over mail ballot eligibility have the potential to delay results and even change outcomes. In some cases, the disputes could wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The potential for chaos is especially high in Pennsylvania, where the legal fight is ongoing and could influence or postpone the outcome in some of the state’s tightest races, including
a contest that could determine control of the U.S. Senate.
Republican National Committee spokeswoman Emma Vaughn said in a statement that the committee sued in Pennsylvania “because we are simply asking for counties to follow the state law, which by the way, dozens of Democrats supported.”
“We look forward to continuing our legal actions to ensure that elections are administered in accordance with this bipartisan rule of law,” Vaughn added.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) issued a statement Sunday night in which he asserted that “no voter should be disenfranchised simply because they made a minor error in filling out their ballot.”
“This was not a controversial concept in our country or our commonwealth until recently, with the rise of the Big Lie and the efforts to spread mis- and disinformation in the days leading up to the general election,” Wolf continued. “I urge counties to continue to ensure that every vote counts.”
Election officials are braced for a repeat of a protracted standoff following Pennsylvania’s May primary between state officials and three counties — Berks, Fayette and Lancaster — that refused to include undated ballots in their certified results.
Wolf’s administration sued those counties in July to force them to include the ballots, the majority of which were cast by Democrats, court records show. In August,
a state judge ordered the counties to include “all lawfully cast ballots,” including those with missing dates, in their certified results.