Obviously dead people can’t go into a polling booth, but people can vote by post and then die before the election. Do their votes count? Is there a time limit? Let’s say that I’m going to be on the ISS for 6 months, cast a postal ballot for an election in 180 days time, and die on the way up. Or I go off rowing the Pacific and die.
I imagine that ordinarily people would be too fussed - ‘respecting the wishes of the dead’, not enough to make a difference, and all that - but if the election were on a knife-edge (cough, 2000, cough), then it might make a difference, and push might come to shove.
Ironically, I just read this in Uncle John’s Reader (about 12 hours ago), that the vote counts. Now whether or not you trust this source is something else.
My experience as an election judge in the county I live, absentee ballots mailed up to 30 days prior to the election were valid. The county doesn’t send the ballots till then so it would be impossible to get the ballot much before the 30 day period. My county has also had a few election problems in the recent past, one was they received and counted ballots for folks that had gone to the great beyond before the 30 day period. Some folks raised a stink because a couple elderly women had to spend some time in jail when they sent in a ballot for their late husbands. In one case, the old codger died about a year before the election. If someone died during the 30 day period and it was that person signature on the ballot, it would be counted. Depending on the laws on your state and county, YMMV.
Election laws vary by state, so there isn’t one answer for the question. I believe Slate had an Explainer article on this subject within the last week due to Hillary Clinton’s story of the woman casting her absentee ballot and then promptly dying.
I don’t see the problem here. Why wouldn’t the vote count? It is legally cast. If you think it shouldn’t count, what about this:
If I vote on election day at 9am and am subsequently killed in a car crash on the way home, should the police notify the election board, so that my ballot can be removed from the counting process before the polls close later that evening?