According to a new NPR report, at least 65,000 absentee or mail-in ballots from this year’s primaries have already been rejected. While this number of disqualified ballots is around 1%, the number of citizens planning to vote by mail in November is expected to be tens of millions. This will drastically increase the odds of more ballots being rejected.
The ballots were discarded because they arrived past the deadline, which was of no fault to the voter, NPR reported Monday.
What’s more troubling is that many of the first-time mail-in voters, primarily young, Black and Latino voters, are more likely to have their ballots rejected due to errors, according to Charles Stewart, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies election administration.
“That’s the sort of thing that makes me wary about what’s going to happen in November when we get an even larger influx of people who haven’t voted or haven’t voted by mail in the past,” Stewart explained to NPR.
In 2016, Trump won Michigan by just 10,704 votes. That same scenario could play out this year if a few thousand ballots are discarded. Millions of voters will cast mail-in ballots for this year’s general election to avoid in-person interactions as the country grapples with the coronavirus pandemic.
Democrats and voter advocacy groups are asking that the process be amended to allow ballots to be counted so long as they are postmarked by Election Day. Lawsuits have already been filed in at least ten states to challenge mail-in ballots laws.
On the other hand, Republicans and some conservative groups are arguing that extending the deadline for mail-in ballots would erode public confidence in elections and could delay the final results for weeks. Trump has been vocal about his disdain for mail-in voting, alleging that mail-in ballots will lead to election fraud.
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