In addition to untold tens of thousands of mail-in ballots being delayed by postal delivery and possibly disqualified, thousands of provisional ballots may also be in play as Ohio's verification process unfolds after Election Day -- where they are the last votes to be counted. (In 2018, nearly 101,000 Ohioans cast provisional ballots, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission reported. Only California and New York cast more.)
For Ohio's April 28 primary, mail-in ballots postmarked up to one day (April 27) before the election can arrive up to 10 days later (May 8) and still count. County election boards have one additional day (May 9) to validate provisional ballots before counting them.
Disqualifications and delays of hundreds of thousands of ballots could undermine the public's acceptance of the outcome of the fall's general election, the nation's leading scholars in election law, politics and media said in a just-issued report coordinated and produced by Richard Hasen, a University of California, Irvine, law and political science professor.
"Even before the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the United States, close observers of American democracy worried about the public's faith and confidence in the results of the upcoming November 2020 U.S. elections," said the executive summary of "Fair Elections During a Crisis: Urgent Recommendations in Law, Media, Politics, and Tech to Advance the Legitimacy of, and the Public's Confidence in, the November 2020 U.S. Elections. Americans can no longer take for granted that election losers will concede a closely-fought election after election authorities (or courts) have declared a winner," it continued.
The report's first legal recommendation sought to avoid what has been seen in Wisconsin and Ohio, the first two statewide vote-by-mail elections since the pandemic.
"States should adopt reforms to improve the absentee ballot and provisional ballot processes -- both in terms of access and security," it said. "In particular, states should reduce... counting delays that could cause significant shifts in vote margins after in-precinct results are reported on election night."
Mass disqualifications of ballots and counting delays could accelerate disinformation where candidates claim victory based on early and incomplete results, and then seek to disrupt the counting while arguing in court that they should be declared the winners.
"Incendiary rhetoric about rigged or stolen elections is on the rise, and unsubstantiated claims of rigged elections find a receptive audience especially among those who are on the losing end of the election," the scholars said. "American elections are highly decentralized, leaving pockets of weak election administration which can further undermine voter confidence in the process. The COVID-19 pandemic, which hit the United States hard beginning in March 2020, has only exacerbated concerns about the fairness and integrity of the 2020 elections."
But the first two statewide elections embracing the go-to solution for voting in a public health crisis, voting-by-mail, in Wisconsin and Ohio, show that tilting of the rules by the most partisan Republicans in swing states is not merely a concern. It is a fact.
We believe that Ohio is an example of the way not to run a vote-by-mail system," said the Lawyers' Committee's Clarke. "It most certainly appears that Ohio is on pace to have one of the lowest turnout rates for a presidential primary election in modern times."(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
