I understand that, but those cases themselves are based upon racism.
It would be like saying that a 70mph speed limit violates equal protection because white people are responsible drivers but only those wild blacks like to drive their sports cars really fast, therefore, the speed limit has a disparate impact on black people. It’s absurd and feeds into the ideas that the KKK would be proud to promote.
There is that risk. And if the ballots had shown up after all the counting and recounting had been completed and the results certified, I’d agree that even if those votes would have tipped the outcome my way, it’s too late and life just sucks sometimes.
But we’re talking about an election where the counting is in progress. There’s no reason, other than an excessive devotion to arbitrary rules, to not count those ballots.
Who needs a law to say that? It should be just the standard default: if counting isn’t done, and legitimate ballots are still turning up, you count them. Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh.
Stuff like this is going to happen, as long as we have the jerry-rigged voting system we have, dependent on 3000 different counties’ ways of doing things, and an army of volunteer and/or trivially-paid temporary election workers. Every election, for instance, boxes of ballots turn up in the trunk of an election worker’s car.
Well, of course an insistence on not allowing election officials any slack in their schedule should take precedence over voters’ rights to have their votes counted properly. Gotta have our priorities properly aligned!
Sure, one must vote, or at least be in line to vote, by the time the polls close on election day. I’ve got no problem with that.
But what does that have to do with administrative deadlines, where compliance is completely outside the control of the voter? Why should the fate of my vote be caught up in squabbles between the state and the county? What does that have to do with the legitimacy of my vote? Once I vote, their job is to make sure it’s counted properly, no matter which ‘they’ we’re talking about.
Has the deadline ever been an issue in Broward? That is, has the date as currently set ever been tested as to whether it is appropriate and fair? In any case, given that the winners in the elections at hand won’t be sworn into office until next year, then why not extend the deadline to ensure that all votes are counted accurately?
How I love these authoritarian, “If you make a mistake, you’re out” pontifications. Have you ever watched an optical scanner in operation? I have–not on votes, but on standardized tests. Those suckers are sensitive, and sometimes they screw up. Should all ballots that are rejected by a machine the first time through not be counted, even if it turns out to be machine error?
Furthermore, if some poor schmuck doesn’t get his pen mark completely within the oval on one race, do you really think his votes on **all **the other races shouldn’t count?
A cop who taught at the state police academy told me that all drivers break the law many times per day. Think about your driving today. Did you turn on your blinker precisely 100 feet before the turn? Did you make a right-hand turn into the left lane? Did you stop 4 inches into the crosswalk? Tut-tut. If you can’t follow all the rules perfectly, you shouldn’t get to drive.
Dates and deadlines do not present constitutional issues though. States can have early voting or they can mandate voting on the first Tuesday of November. They have to certify results in time or else they lose representation when the next Congress opens, so they need a deadline for that.
That’s a terrible idea because if the design is poor you’ve screwed up all of the elections in the country. And there’s no way to know for sure that a design won’t confuse a small percentage of people.
Given the small percentages involved, you’d need to test it on thousands of people to get an answer on whether the ballot is good or not. Or, you could just use a little common sense and assume that voters have common sense.
You both make excellent arguments as to why the law should be different. But the fact remains that the law is not what you prefer, or what I prefer. I think it is only fair to count these ballots in Opa Locka. There is no indication of fraud and these voters did nothing dilatory or wrongful by mailing them.
But the law says they must arrive at the county election center by 7 p.m. on election day. They did not so arrive. Therefore, they should not be counted. The Legislature should amend that law. That doesn’t change the fact that the law is what it is. It is facially neutral and does not have disparate impact on Republicans, Democrats, whites, blacks, or gay people. I do not see how it could be considered unconstitutional.
Since we are still in the counting process, can a Florida voter who did not vote stumble out onto A1A and yell, I vote for Rick Scott for Senate! and have his voted counted? I mean, the intent of a legal voter, right? Isn’t it fair that we count his vote?
This is why we regard the right to vote as a fundamental right that can’t be overruled by laws. Because the laws would prevent voters’ votes from being counted, even though they voted legally, because some minor civil servant screwed up.
To apply the law as written would deprive people of their franchise after they’d done what they needed to do to exercise it. And that’s why the courts are telling the law to back off and give a bit more room to get the counting done.
While processes that had disparate impacts on one protected group or another would also be subject to challenge, those are not the only grounds, are they?
You keep bringing this up. Could you explain what it has to do with my argument? I’ve been clear that voters must vote, or at a minimum be in line to vote, by the time the polls are supposed to close. But once they’ve voted, every effort must be made to count their votes, and count them correctly.
Wondering the same thing - Pasco County notified me of receipt long before election day, but I have no idea when (or indeed whether) it was actually counted.
