[EL] Those 540k rejected postal votes in primaries Re: ELB News and Commentary 8/23/20

Mon Aug 24 17:04:20 PDT 2020

This stat featured in the Washington Post's lead story today indeed is
troubling, and let's hope measures are taken to reduce that number sharply.

I'll point out, though, that on March 3rd, more than 577,000 votes were
cast in California alone for presidential candidates who had already
dropped out by the time they were counted -- that's more than all the
postal votes with problems analyzed below. Nationally, the number of such
"lost votes" approached 3 million,
<https://www.fairvote.org/wasted_vote_tracker>  Among examples, more than
733,000 votes for Buttigieg after he dropped out, 558,000 for Warren and so
on. In Colorado, they don't even report the totals; more than 15% of all
presidential primary votes were counted as "undervotes" because they were
cast for a withdrawn candidate.

Based on our analysis of ranked choice voting in the four Democratic
presidential primaries where it was used
<https://www.fairvote.org/fairvote_releases_report_detailing_the_effectiveness_of_ranked_choice_voting_in_presidential_primaries>and
based on looking at the patterns for votes for candidates in Washington
state
<https://www.fairvote.org/early_votes_in_washington_were_more_likely_to_be_wasted>that
were cast early versus cast late, it's a good bet  around nine in ten of
those votes would have counted for an active presidential candidate if
those states had used ranked choice voting  - that is, likely more than
2.5  million votes would have gone to active candidates.

Th9is was a big problem on the GOP side in 2016, with more than 600,000
votes cast for withdrawn candidates when the nomination was still in play.
Here's hoping we can fix this problem by 2024.

Rob

On Sun, Aug 23, 2020 at 11:39 PM Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu> wrote:

>
>
> “More than 500,000 mail ballots were rejected in the primaries. That could
> make the difference in battleground states this fall.”
> <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114381>
>
> Posted on August 23, 2020 6:19 pm <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114381>
> by *Rick Hasen* <https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
>
> WaPo:
> <https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/rejected-mail-ballots/2020/08/23/397fbe92-db3d-11ea-809e-b8be57ba616e_story.html>
>
> *More than 540,000 mail ballots were rejected during primaries across 23
> states this year — nearly a quarter in key battlegrounds for the fall —
> illustrating how missed delivery deadlines, inadvertent mistakes and uneven
> enforcement of the rules could disenfranchise voters and affect the outcome
> of the presidential election.*
>
> *The rates of rejection, which in some states exceeded those of other
> recent elections, could make a difference in the fall if the White House
> contest is decided by a close margin, as it was in 2016, when Donald Trump
> won Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by roughly 80,000 votes
> <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/donald-trump-will-be-president-thanks-to-80000-people-in-three-states/?itid=lk_inline_manual_4>.*
>
> *This year, according to a tally by The Washington Post, election
> officials in those three states tossed out more than 60,480 ballots just
> during primaries, which saw significantly lower voter turnout than what is
> expected in the general election. The rejection figures include ballots
> that arrived too late to be counted or were invalidated for another reason,
> including voter error….*
>
> *Election experts said that the combination of the hotly contested White
> House race and millions of first-time mail voters could lead to a record
> number of ballot rejections and trigger a searing legal war over which are
> valid — and who is the ultimate victor.*
>
> *“If the election is close, it doesn’t matter how well it was run — it
> will be a mess,” said Charles Stewart III, a political science professor at
> MIT who studies election data. “The two campaigns will be arguing over
> nonconforming ballots, which is going to run up against voters’ beliefs in
> fair play,” he said.*
>
> *President Trump has already cast doubt
> <https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-assault-on-election-integrity-forces-question-what-would-happen-if-he-refused-to-accept-a-loss/2020/07/22/d2477150-caae-11ea-b0e3-d55bda07d66a_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_12> on
> whether he will accept a loss to Democratic nominee Joe Biden
> <https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/joe-biden/?itid=lk_inline_manual_12> and
> has repeatedly stoked unfounded fears about voting by mail. Top campaign
> advisers are also mapping out a post-election strategy centered in part on
> challenging mail ballots that do not have postmarks, as The Post previously
> reported
> <https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-mail-voting/2020/08/13/3eb9ac62-dd70-11ea-809e-b8be57ba616e_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_12>.*
>
> [image: Share]
> <https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D114381&title=%E2%80%9CMore%20than%20500%2C000%20mail%20ballots%20were%20rejected%20in%20the%20primaries.%20That%20could%20make%20the%20difference%20in%20battleground%20states%20this%20fall.%E2%80%9D>
>
> Posted in Uncategorized <https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Rick Hasen
>
> Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
>
> UC Irvine School of Law
>
> 401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000
>
> Irvine, CA 92697-8000
>
> 949.824.3072 - office
>
> rhasen at law.uci.edu
>
> http://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/
>
> http://electionlawblog.org
>
>
>
>
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-- 
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