[EL] Reducing the Risk of an Election Meltdown

[Mark Scarberry]

Bill,

In Ohio, how long do you wait to see whether an absentee ballot arrives?
Does that cause a substantial delay in counting?

This approach certainly would be difficult to implement if a state sends
every registered voter a vote-by-mail ballot. Every in-person vote would
have to be treated as provisional, I suppose.

Mark
[image: Pepperdine wordmark]*Caruso School of Law*

*Mark S. Scarberry*

*Professor of Lawmark.scarberry at pepperdine.edu
<mark.scarberry at pepperdine.edu>*




On Fri, Mar 20, 2020 at 3:19 PM James Bopp Jr <jboppjr at aol.com> wrote:

> So in the Ohio example, a voter cannot trump his or her absentee ballot by
> voting on election day. In that instance, the election board could count
> absentee ballots before election day, but not in Indiana's case.
>
> But I am not sure the Ohio's policy choice is the best. What is the
> justification to lock in the absentee ballot rather than the voter's choice
> on election day?  Jim Bopp
> ------------------------------
> On Friday, March 20, 2020 Rich,William D <rich at uakron.edu> wrote:
>
> That’s not the way it works, at least in Ohio.  If a voter requests and is
> sent an absentee ballot and then shows up to vote on election day, the
> voter is given a provisional ballot.  If the absentee ballot is returned to
> the board of elections and is valid (countable), the absentee ballot is
> counted and the provisional election-day ballot is not counted.  If the
> absentee ballot is not returned or if it is returned but is invalid because
> of some deficiency (e.g., no signature on absentee ballot affirmation), the
> provisional election day ballot is counted (if it is valid).
>
>
>
> Bill Rich
>
> University of Akron School of Law and
>
> Chairman, Summit County Board of Elections
>
>
>
> *From: *Law-election <law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu> on
> behalf of James Bopp Jr <jboppjr at aol.com>
> *Date: *Friday, March 20, 2020 at 3:53 PM
> *To: *"larrylevine at earthlink.net" <larrylevine at earthlink.net>, "
> rick.pildes at nyu.edu" <rick.pildes at nyu.edu>, "
> Martin.Lederman at law.georgetown.edu" <Martin.Lederman at law.georgetown.edu>,
> "rhasen at law.uci.edu" <rhasen at law.uci.edu>, "law-election at uci.edu" <
> law-election at uci.edu>
> *Subject: *Re: [EL] Reducing the Risk of an Election Meltdown
>
>
>
> CAUTION: This email originated from outside of The University of Akron.
>
> As I understand it, most state laws, including those in Indiana, permit a
> voter to come to the polling place to vote, even if they have sent in an
> absentee ballot.  So on election night, the first thing the poll workers do
> is to check the poll book to see if the absentee voter came to the polling
> place to vote. If so, the absentee ballot is not cast.
>
> If you open and cast the absentee ballot before the election, how do you
> deal with a voter who wants to come to the polling place to vote?  I assume
> he or she would have to be prohibited from doing that. My policy preference
> is that the voter have this option since things might have changed since he
> or she sent in their absentee ballot and they may want to change their vote
> based on this additional information.
>
>
>
> Is there another option or do you disagree with my policy preference?  Jim
> Bopp
>
>
>
> In a message dated 3/20/2020 3:18:27 PM US Eastern Standard Time,
> larrylevine at earthlink.net writes:
>
>
>
> As you note, some states already permit processing absentee ballots ahead
> of election day. There is not good reason why every state should not do
> that. That would lessen but not eliminate the issue of late and delayed
> results.
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