Thanks. I’m old enough that I should have remembered that.
In the space marked “Do not write in this space” you wrote “Ok.”
The 83 without addresses should be tossed. The law is clear, the instructions I presume are clear - and the voters didn’t do it. You may think that the law is dumb - and that the law should be changed - but that doesn’t change the fact that the law is currently there.
The ones with the address label. These should be counted. They have a printed address on their ballot. I assume that the law wanted a hand written address, but “printed” as a term can refer to labels and such have followed the instructions. Trying to argue that these should be invalidated is saying that “printed” as a word only means hand written - and as plain text reading of the law - I don’t think that stands.
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Sure, it’s the law. But apparently the technical details of how a ballot is to be filled out only matters in states where Biden is leading and the vote is close.
Ok. I’m being obtuse. Obviously the only reason to challenge the votes is to manufacture evidence of fraud. The voters themselves had genuine intentions. The people challenging the votes do not.
It doesn’t matter.
The people arguing that those votes should count have equal bad intentions - they don’t care about that specific individual. If the shoe was on the other foot, the same arguments would be made - just by the different sides.
This is just a basic, boring technical legal issue that happens all accross the country every day. Don’t blow it up into something beyond what it is.
If it bothers you that big things can be impacted by nit picking regulations - the issue then isn’t the legal battle referenced - but the level of micromanagement in the regulations.
You are might be right if there were enough such votes to change the outcome of the vote. Here, with no chance there are enough such ballots to change the outcome of the vote, the ultimate intent to change the effect of the election rather than to give it to the winner of the most counted votes. Or even just to destroy the credibility of the election. I don’t the democrats would do that (if the situtation were reversed) if they didn’t think they had a shot at having the most counted votes.
Are you talking about the lawyers or the posters here? Because my answer wouldn’t change even if most of these were Trump votes, FWIW.
I agree with your result. I think the address is a worthwhile requirement due to the possibility that different people have identical names.
I think the word “printed” in the law refers to the printed form on the ballot. The language for the voters’ action is
“The elector shall then fill out …”.
I think your comment still works. “Fill out” can include hand-written and it can include printed by a machine.
Also, I’m not even sure that you can truthfully say that of the lawyers in this case, since a BoE is the defendant.
I agree that one reason the Rs are pushing this issue is that it only appears on mail-in ballots, and they believe that mail-in ballots skew in favor of Biden. In other cases, Ds argue technicalities when it favors their candidates.
But, there is a second reason in this election. They want to “manufacture evidence of fraud”. Trump wants to claim there is massive, intentional, law breaking fraud. He will use every lawsuit, whoever wins the case, as an attempt by the Rs to beat back that fraud. Simply filing the lawsuit helps Trump sell his lie.
In this case, the judge pushed on the lawyer to distinguish between a technical, probably unintentional, deficiency vs. intentional fraud. It took two questions, but the RNC lawyer agreed that he was not claiming any fraud, just a technical oversight.
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Would Dems be doing the same thing if the shoe were on the other foot? Well, Trump won a few states with thin margins 4 years ago. How long did Dems wait until conceding the election? They conceded right away. I don’t know if any lawsuits were filed, but I don’t think the argument that the left would have done the same thing holds any water.
I don’t understand the comments surrounding the address being required for identification purposes. There is a bar code that identifies the voter. I would imagine that the poll worker scans the bar code and then checks the signature.
Your Honor, for that number that you just said, the answer to your question is that in addition to having the printed address, there also is the bar code, Your Honor. And the bar code scans to the SURE system with a specific identification of the voter involved, which would include their address.
The ballots are useable without the pre-printed sticker. The voter is directed to fill out the address.
You are correct in that if all the ballots had pre-printed barcodes linking to the voter’s unique ID, they wouldn’t need the address. If they did that, they could change the law to “must include pre-printed voter ID” or similar.
If PA’s balloting ID relies fully on the poll worker being able to read handwritten signatures and/or addresses, PA has bigger problems than this lawsuit! What I’m saying is that I think there are barcodes on every envelope. They have a ballot tracking system in place and I find it difficult to believe that there is not a barcode on each envelope (except for any one-offs where the person prepping the ballots forgot to put them on – maybe the ~80 ballots with no address at all have this problem).
A picture of the outer envelope with a preprinted label that includes a barcode is at the bottom of the article:
Toss the 83, Accept the remaining ones, and tell the Lawyers to go pound sand.
I think this is what the back of the envelope looks like (at least what I could find on google).
Trump lawyers trying to be super technical that even with the sticker there or something on the front of the form the “elector” hasn’t “filled out” the declaration form.
I would probably say that with the sticker there those (all except the 83) has the declaration form filled out.
I believe there was a time when PA absentee ballots did not have barcodes. And, yes, they relied on the poll worker reading the handwritten names and addresses.
The law requires that the voter “fill out” the declarations section of the ballot, which you can see in your link.
The argument is about ballots where the declaration section is not completely filled out. The address is missing.
The law does not mention barcodes or preprinted addresses at all.
The RNC contention is that these voters failed to fill out the declarations section, as required by law, and therefore the ballots are invalid.
The DNC contention (I believe) is that the pre-printed address to the right of the declarations section effectively fulfills the requirement that the declaration section be filled in, even though the declaration section itself was not completed.
The RNC lawyer agrees that he is arguing a “technicality”, but says that is the nature of election laws and these technical procedures must be followed.
A result of throwing these out would be that a ballot with a handwritten address but a mismatching signature would count, yet a ballot with a matching signature but no handwritten address would not count. If that is the result, it’s incredibly unfair. I know, I know, it’s a technicality. It’s good that I did not go into law. It can be very unsatisfying.
Why would mismatching signatures count?