On July 9, three U.S. Senators introduced S1415, to help overseas voters get their ballots counted. The sponsors are Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY), Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga), and Ben Nelson (D-Neb). The bill requires states to send their overseas absentee ballots no later than 45 days before the election. Also, it says that if the ballots are postmarked no later than election day, they must be counted as long as they arrive no later than 10 days after the election. Also the bill forbids states from requiring that voter registration applications, or absentee ballots, be notarized.
The bill is expected to move ahead rapidly. It has a hearing on July 15. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for this news.
Bout time. On active duty my buds were always complaining of such……
Donald Raymond Lake
How much will this cause the election systems in all of the States to have earlier deadlines for all sorts of stuff — including ballot access ???
Demo Rep,
That depends on the existing deadlines and on whether a given state is already looking for an excuse to adopt earlier deadlines.
The 45 day transit time for overseas voters, mandated for the first time in this bill, is an important reform. If a ballot access deadline makes this impossible, then the deadline is too late. Please note: I’m not talking about using overseas voters as an excuse for having deadlines that are earlier than than what is actually needed to verify signatures, print ballots and voter pamphlets, etc.
Does anybody know whether this bill would apply to state and/or local elections as well as federal elections?
In 2005, the Texas legislature passed HB 2339 which among its other provisions required overseas ballots to be sent 45 days before the election. Previously Texas had required 38 days (at that time federal law required 30 days, but the Department of Justice and the Elections Assistance Commission had recommended 45 days).
HB 2339 moved other deadlines back to accommodate this, including the date by which the Secretary of State would certify presidential candidates to the county election authorities; and the date by which a state party chair must certify a presidential candidate to the secretary of state. It was this latter deadline that the major political parties missed in 2008. Nonetheless, the Secretary of State was able to certify the presidential candidates to the counties by the deadline, which in turn gave the counties time to prepare and print ballots, and send ballots overseas to Texans serving in the military.
Had Bob Barr’s suit against the State of Texas succeeded, then these ballots might have had to been recalled or reprinted, or perhaps ballots cast for McCain and Obama discarded. And this would have occurred while large areas of Texas were without electrical power.