On October 29, U.S. District Court Judge Roger W. Titus, a Bush Jr. appointee, held that Maryland’s deadline for overseas absentee ballots to be received, in order to be counted, is unconstitutional.  The deadline is 10 days after the election.  The law also requires the absentee overseas voter to have mailed his or her ballot back to the United States no later than election day, and no one has any quarrel with that requirement.

The judge said that the state must count overseas absentee ballots if they arrive by November 22.  The evidence showed that a substantial number of overseas military ballots, even though mailed by November 2, would not arrive in Maryland by November 12.

The decision rests partly on the 1983 U.S. Supreme Court decision Anderson v Celebrezze, in which early petition deadlines for independent presidential candidates were held unconstitutional.  The judge made an analogy between too-early petition deadlines for candidates, and too-early deadlines for voters’ ballots to be received.

Maryland already was sending overseas absentee ballots in mid-September, to conform to a new federal law, but those early ballots only contain federal offices, because the new federal law only covers federal elections.  Maryland was not mailing overseas absentee ballots that contain all offices until October.  Maryland laws prohibits election officials from postally mailing any absentee ballot (foreign or domestic) if that ballot has state offices on it, until after the September primary has been certified.  Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for this news.