You’re probably right. While some states do allow organizations to apply for and/or deliver ballots on behalf of voters, any shenanigans with ballots after election day would likely be apparent with abnormal volume of late arriving ballots. I wonder if election officials generally report on counts of late arriving ballots.
I sort of like your “must be received by” election day idea, because it resolves any of these questions as well as eliminating the annoying fact of not knowing what percent of ballots remain to be counted. Is this becoming an issue in not being able to call certain races in a timely manner?
I’d much much less concerned about postmarks being fake than ballots being faked (or harvested or bribed or fake signed or lost or miscounted or unverified)
Honestly, if you forgot got to vote on election day, and you want to fake a postmark be my guest.
I agree it’s weird, and that there’s something to be said for being all done on election day? But as someone who is frequently late on bills, paperwork, etc. I like having long deadlines where it’s practical to do so.
As long as it’s communicated clearly I guess any system would be fine. I think it’s crazy that we don’t have a national standard and just do the same thing everywhere, but that’s a whole other discussion.
Anyone with a postage meter can pre-stamp a bunch of envelopes, which postmarks them. I know of people using that to get around various deadlines. Get the envelope ready to go on the deadline and then you’ve got an extra 3-4 days to actually mail it in. So you just need to be friendly with a random person or business that has a postage meter.
I agree it probably wouldn’t swing an election, but it’s really not all that difficult to fudge a “postmark-by” requirement.
CO is must be received by Election Day, though overseas military ballots I think follow different rules. Lots of drop boxes to put your ballot in- ive never actually put it in the mailbox.
I think PA’s requirement is “received by” also, except maybe military. Perhaps every place’s is? My main point is that if for whatever reason there are ballots not yet received which will be counted, that doesn’t seem like a reason to hold up the regular count and release of the regular count.
When I lived in the Northwest Washington state was “postmarked by” and Oregon was “received by”.
I don’t know if the advent of prepaid envelopes changes that… do they postmark prepaid envelopes? The prepaid stuff I get in the mail doesn’t seem to have a postmark.
Our biggest security is how decentralized elections are though. It’s really thousands of counties holding elections all counting and reporting upwards, so it’s harder to interfere in multiple small elections
Ok, found a few free minutes… a simple extrapolation in the Nevada Senate race (dividing each candidate/county total by the estimated percent in) yields the following:
Laxalt: 495,081
Cortez Masto: 493,482
Laxalt’s votes go from 50.05% (of those cast for the top two candidates) to 50.08%.
Obviously the remaining votes may not come in matching the ratios of the votes already counted; this is just a simple crude calculation. Even the estimated vote in might be wrong. Still… seems to favor the Republican, particularly if there are material military votes outstanding.
Nope. They’ve been strongly for the Democrat since election night, and growing everyday. I assume based on the types of ballots remaining and some basic trending.
You’re analysis misses:
-vote differential by location, as a batch from rural areas vs city areas makes a difference. Edit: missed the county part above, which alleviates a chunk of this
-vote differential by method of voting. In person skews R, Mail skews D.