Arizona attorney general Kris Mayes plans to overhaul a unit created by her predecessor to investigate unsubstantiated claims of election fraud into a task force focused on reinforcing voting rights instead.
Frist. (Imagine Schrödinger’s cat here)
Arizona is the state I am eyeing most to see if sanity will prevail, or if this past election will be washed away by the cult in the coming elections.
Ohio is getting interesting too. Note: Interesting can co-exist with frightening. Nothing happening in our nation now is reassuring.
So Ms Wright/Wrong how many candidates won by 20 votes?
ETA: I still can’t wrap my head around throwing out someone’s vote if they die before election day. Does the state check that everyone who cast a vote in person on election day is still alive before the results are announced?
You can’t vote if you’re dead. However, your vote can count if you’re dead, depending on how you voted.
If you voted early in person, as many states allow, then die, your vote will count because it’s already in the machine, and because ballots are secret, they can’t pull yours out because they don’t know which one it is.
If you voted by mail, it depends. Most states preprocess ballots received in the mail. That is, they open the envelope when it arrives and check it in and then enter it into the machine. If that has happened, and then you die, once again your vote will count.
But if it’s found that you’ve died before your ballot goes into the machine, then, yes, your ballot (still in its envelope) can be pulled.
States keep track of who has died, to be able to remove the dead from the registration list. So there is some small chance that if you vote by mail then die before the election, your vote won’t get counted. I doubt that it happens very often.
Moral of the story: vote on the first possible day of in-person early voting.
These people–Wright, Hamadeh, and Kari Lake, among others–are liars. Pure human waste product intent on undermining democracy unless they win. I wish them, their families, and their low life racist filth supporters, horrible painful lives, including time in prison for their fraudulence and lies.
I seem to remember a story out MI where an elderly man went and voted early in person during the 2020 election. He died before election day, and in MI they threw his vote out.
It just seems with so many states having early voting, in person or by mail that if they die before election day, or before the election can be called then their vote should count.
All of this because we don’t have a nationalized voting system.
This is not an endorsement if the woman requested a mail in ballot for her deceased mother. Totally a different thing IMO.
I saw a recent poll showing Lake beating Gallego, for the Senate seat.
I cannot fathom what it would be like to have Lake in Washington, with Gosar, Boebert, Gangrene, Gaetz, et al. She’d make the Senate as crazy as the House.
There is much work to be done…
Arizona attorney general Kris Mayes plans to overhaul a unit created by her predecessor to investigate unsubstantiated claims of election fraud into a task force focused on reinforcing voting rights instead.
The newly elected Democrat hopes the unit will “reprioritize the mission and resources” it has into “protecting voting access and combating voter suppression,” she told the Guardian on Saturday.
Excellent.
Appears that Jennifer Wright - head of Arizona’s Election Integrity Unity … has questionable INTEGRITY !
Outside his own district, and only slightly less true inside his district, Gallego is unknown.
While Democrats being Democrats will do everything they can to mess it up for Democrats, 2024 is likely to be a good year for Democrats.
As for the Senate being as crazy as the House, remember Ted Cruz is in the Senate as is Marsha Blackburn, Ron Johnson and Tommy Turdville. Heck, Herschel Walker almost was a Senator.
The difference between the House and the Senate is Mitch McConnell only cares about the money and is using the money to keep Senate Republicans in line.
“Under my predecessor’s administration, the election integrity unit searched widely for voter fraud and found scant evidence of it occurring in Arizona,” new AG Mayes said in a statement. “That’s because instances of voter fraud are exceedingly rare.”
She missed a part: not only are they exceedingly rare, but they are typically done by Republicans.
I don’t know the story, so I can’t comment on it.
However, despite all the differences among states, all have the secret ballot as a bedrock principle. So, once a ballot has been cast–put into the scanner, put into the ballot box, whatever–it can’t be recovered, because there is no way to link the ballot to the person. If there is, it implies that the ballot is not secret.
Up to the point where the ballot is cast, yes, it could be pulled, if they find out you’re dead, or otherwise not eligible to vote.
And if your mother fills out her mail-in ballot, seals it up, then croaks, you are not allowed to put it in the mailbox. That would make you culpable of vote fraud.
How can we without collapsing the equation?
It’s almost funny that so many Republicans believe that it’s impossible for them to lose an election. Almost…
The GOP is corrupt to a degree unimaginable by the standards most of us grew up on…and even during that period, it was electing people who were planting the seeds of Right Wing thinking
I these points you clarified I disagree with. Especially with VBM in states that won’t even open the envelope until election day, or even on election day but after the polls have closed.
And something we haven’t touched is how did they know someone died before ballots were scanned?
I’ve said this before when my mother passed in the summer of 2019 I checked our county BOE to see how to notify them of her death. There were no instructions, so I waited. I’d checked every couple of days, and it took them six week to take her off the voter rolls.
I realize that we’re in the weeds here, but I did find this:
Apparently MO, my state, is on the does not count dead people’s vote list. The article I listed is dated 2020, but before that in St. Louis County MO we switched to paper ballots that are scanned. I haven’t done absentee voting in decades, so I’m not sure when they scan them. But in 2020 with COVID they started no excuse, in person voting, I know, I know that’s really early voting but MO does allow early voting so we call it something else.
(if you haven’t figured it out I like to know process and procedures)
Different states call things differently, like “absentee” or “no-excuse absentee” or whatever. In a lot of cases, those names are written into law, so they’re not easy to change. However, we can just call them “early in-person” and “early by-mail” and “election day” voting.
Regardless, my point stands that once a ballot has been cast, it’s done, there’s no backsies, because of ballot secrecy breaking the link between person and ballot.
Nothing prevents any state from accepting ballots that were filled out and mailed before the person dies. Most states, though, are going to say dead people can’t vote. (Your ballotpedia link doesn’t actually make any of this clear–I can’t make out what they’re trying to say by “states that allow” vs “states that don’t allow.”)
To the question of how the registrars find out someone is dead, in Virginia and I suspect most states, they’re receiving reports at the state level of death certificates issued. (I doubt anyone is scanning obituaries, because that would be a way to miss a lot of deaths.) The efficiency of this process (issuance of the death certificate, reporting it to the state, the state reporting it into the registration database) is going to determine how quickly someone is noted as dead and removed.
I know in some cases just the process of issuing the death certificate can be slow. I know that happens, especially in small rural counties with small staffs. So that’s one source of delay.
Finally, another source, at least here in Virginia, is that there is some manual verification of death notices by the voter registrars. This to make sure the right person is being removed. If there’s not an election going on or coming up soon, they may just stack up the death notices and deal with them in a batch closer to when it becomes necessary. This is a part that could be sped up, by not needing the manual verification process.
You’re quite the wordsmith, Sabatia. Reminds me of these lines from an editorial back in the day:
Hanging is none too good for them. They would be much better dead, for they are absolutely useless in the human economy; they are the waste material of creation and should be drained off into the sewer of oblivion there to rot in cold obstruction like any other excrement.
– San Diego Tribune, March 4, 1912.
They were writing about the wobblies, unfortunately, but the words fit so many today.
If I were the judge hearing her case, I’d make an equitable decision. Find her not guilty because her mother’s dying wish is extenuating. Throw out the dead mother’s vote. Whack the gavel and yell NEXT!
I only know about MO, but I remember someone talking about dead people still being on voter rolls, it’s not a crime. And like you said how fast they are removed depends on the staffing level at the county BOE.
I think our quibble here is in states that receive VBM or absentee votes, that are not immediately scanned, but can only be opened and processed at a certain time, like the morning of, or after the polls close. Really some of these things can, and should be consistent throughout the states.
God I can still remember the fights over Motor Vote Law.