Battlegrounds race clock to speed up ballot counts
GOP lawmakers stall efforts in Rust Belt states
WASHINGTON – Battleground states that could decide the presidential election face a shrinking window to take action to allow the processing of absentee ballots before Election Day to cut down on the days or even weeks it could take to have final results.
In Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, two swing states, efforts stalled in Republican-controlled state legislatures. In a third crucial state, Michigan, a push to begin the counting process several days before the election is dead. Lawmakers gave election officials a 10-hour head start.
Outcomes in the three Rust Belt states could remain in doubt long after polls close Nov. 3, the result of unprecedented volume of mail-in ballots likely because of the coronavirus.
Because of the importance of these three states – Donald Trump narrowly won each in 2016, but polling shows Democratic nominee Joe Biden ahead in all three – the outcome of the entire presidential election is likely to be on hold as well.
Of the 16 most contested states, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Maine and New Hampshire don’t allow the processing of absentee ballots to begin until Election Day. Michigan was in the same category until last week. Experts said Michigan’s 10-hour jump-start before polls close will have little impact.
“It’s like taking a Band-Aid and putting it on a gushing wound,” said Amber McReynolds, CEO of the National Vote at Home Institute, which has lobbied states to give election officials the ability to process mail ballots before the election. “The three states that remain as the most problematic are Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania” – each of which has a Democratic governor and a legislature with a Republican majority.
President Trump has assaulted mailin voting, saying it’s open to fraud, though there’s been little evidence of such. He declined to pledge to hold off on declaring victory before all absentee votes are counted.
Less than one month before the election, any state action would need to happen soon. Mail voting is underway in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, along with several other states.
Before counting absentee ballots,
election officials must open the envelopes containing the ballots, match the signatures on the ballots to registration rolls and verify the bar codes on the envelopes. In some states, they have to remove a “secrecy envelope” containing the ballot from the envelope it’s mailed in. Battleground states such as Florida and Arizona allow this process to begin weeks before Election Day, but other states must wait until Nov. 3.
In Wisconsin, municipal clerks have long sought the ability to count at least some ballots before Election Day, but Republicans who control the Legislature have been unable to reach an agreement on the issue. Legislative leaders have no plans to come back into session before Election Day, even though Wisconsin’s top Republican, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, argued the ballot-counting law should be changed.
More than 1.2 million Wisconsin voters requested mail ballots for the election. Democrats and nonpartisan entities who sued over the state’s election laws sought to allow absentee ballots to be counted before Election Day.
U.S. District Judge William Conley didn’t go along with that request, but last month, he agreed to allow absentee ballots that arrive after Election Day to be counted if they are postmarked by then. Ordinarily, ballots must be in the hands of clerks by Election Day to be counted in Wisconsin.
Pennsylvania took weeks to count all absentee ballots during its presidential primary in June.
Election officials pleaded with state lawmakers to grant them at least the ability to open envelopes and verify sig
natures in advance. Pennsylvania officials expect more than 3 million ballots to be cast during the election after 1.5 million people voted absentee during the primary.
Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf and the Republican-controlled Legislature have not reached an agreement. Wolf wants counties to be able to process ballots 15 days before Nov. 3, and Republicans offered three days. The Republican plan would ban absentee ballot drop-off boxes – something the Trump campaign sued Pennsylvania in June to try to achieve and Wolf strongly opposes.
“We are truly in uncharted territory in Pennsylvania,” said Forrest Lehman, director of elections in Lycoming County. “Counties are very concerned about the ongoing uncertainty as we try to prepare for November. We are running short of time to pass a bill, but we’re not out of time yet, especially if conversations continue.”
The bill is tied up in a state Senate committee, controlled by Republicans, despite having the support of former Gov. Tom Ridge, a Republican, who cochairs a group called VoteSafe, which advocates for vote-by-mail expansion.
“Let’s face it,” Ridge said. “It’s very unlikely, given the unprecedented nature in use of absentee ballots, that we’re going to know on election night who the victor is. But anything we can do to accelerate that process, I think, contributes significantly to preserving the integrity of the election.”
Ridge, a Trump critic who endorsed Biden for president, urged lawmakers and the governor to compromise.
Republicans haven’t budged from their requirement of eliminating dropoff boxes. State Rep. Garth Everett, chair of the State Government Committee, and other Republicans in the General Assembly raised concerns that “unmanned, unsecured drop boxes” could lead to fraud.
Michigan‘s Democratic secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, called for at least seven days before Election Day to process absentee ballots. Democratic lawmakers’ efforts to move the date to the weekend before the election went nowhere in the Republican-led Legislature.
After finagling, legislators approved a bill last week that would give clerks in cities with at least 25,000 people an extra 10 hours to process – but not count – absentee ballots. The measure would affect 72 cities, including the state’s largest, Detroit, which is notoriously slow to tally its votes.
Michigan voters must place absentee ballots in a “secrecy envelope,” then place that into a larger envelope. The legislation would allow clerks to open the outer envelopes and sort ballots from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Nov. 2. Although this would cut down on steps clerks generally take on Election Day, it’s unclear how much time it would save in terms of obtaining final tallies.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, supports the legislation.
“While the Bipartisan Policy Center recommends at least seven days, any extra time would be a help to our clerks,” said Tracy Wimmer, a spokeswoman for Benson.
Michigan is on track to see more than 3 million people vote absentee during the general election, nearly twice the 1.6 million who did in the primary in August. Wimmer said it took until Wednesday evening after the election Tuesday to finish counting all the absentee ballots in the primary.
“It makes sense to expect double the time,” she said in an email. “We’re hoping to have all ballots counted by Friday.”
Democratic voters have requested vastly more mail ballots than Republicans nationally, and polling shows Biden supporters are twice as likely to vote by mail than Trump supporters.
As a result, some Democrats warned of a “red mirage” on election night as inperson results – which might show Trump ahead in many states – are reported before a record number of absentee ballots that could skew toward Biden are counted.