California’s horrid election system is on full display for everyone in the country – and the world – to see. Even some third-world nations count their votes faster, and many on the same day as the election. Most states certainly do. It’s a disgrace what the Democrats have created in the Golden State. But they don’t care. The slow-walking of results is how they designed it, and of course, we know why. You don’t know how many votes you need to “find” right away, so you have to stretch out the process until you have a clear idea how to ‘proceed’ so a Democrat wins.
But this disgrace may soon be coming to an end, compliments of the U.S. Supreme Court. While justices normally defer to states to make their own election rules, those rules must still comport with the Constitution. And there are many legal experts who don’t think it does.
More here:
Imagine putting your taxes in the mail a full week before the April 15 deadline, only to be fined by the Internal Revenue Service for a late filing.
Never mind the April 8 postmark, the IRS explains. Federal tax codes require returns be “filed on or before the 15th day of April.” If your returns were lost in handling or the U.S. Postal Service took too long to deliver them, that’s your problem, not theirs. Filing taxes is a two-step process, the IRS explains, that involves both submitting the returns and having a federal worker record their arrival.
It’s an absurd claim and not the way the IRS operates. But it is the very logic the Supreme Court is expected to use later this month in a decision that could doom California’s mail-in voting system.
California’s snail-paced tallying was back in the news last week as results of several races in the June 2 primary — including the high-profile race for governor and another for mayor of Los Angeles — remained unclear as mail-in ballots continue to arrive and be counted.
According to court filings, 29 states and the District of Columbia permit some form of post-Election Day ballot receipt, though the rules vary significantly from state to state.
Sixteen states limit those extensions primarily to military personnel and Americans living overseas, while 14 states extend grace periods to all voters. California maintains one of the most expansive policies in the nation, allowing ballots to arrive up to a week after Election Day so long as they meet the state’s postmark requirements.
The legal challenge was brought by the Republican and Libertarian parties in Mississippi, which argued that the state’s three-day ballot-receipt window conflicts with federal election law dating back to 1845. That law established that federal elections are to be held on “the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November.”
The plaintiffs contend that counting ballots arriving after Election Day effectively extends the election beyond the date established by Congress. Supporters of grace periods, meanwhile, argue that ballots cast on time should not be rejected solely because of delays in mail delivery:
Like the IRS analogy above, they contend that by “election,” Congress did not merely mean the act of casting a ballot. They argued before the Supreme Court in March that “election” “plainly refer[s] to the combined action of voters and officials meant to make a final selection of an officeholder.”
In other words, no matter when a ballot is placed in the mail, it should only be counted if it arrives at the election office before the end of Election Day.
The opposing argument, offered by the state of Mississippi, is that so long as the choice is made by Election Day, it shouldn’t matter how long it takes the state to count it.
Observers watching oral arguments in March expressed confidence that the Supreme Court will side with those seeking to get rid of grace periods, perhaps preserving them for those abroad. Unless the ruling is narrowly tailored, that means California will need to abandon its grace period — potentially as soon as November.
Some who are defending California’s whacko election rules – ballots can be counted if they are postmarked on Election Day but arrive up to 7 days later – say it’s absurd to believe hundreds of ballot workers would be involved in a conspiracy that could land them in jail.
That’s naive as hell; the vote fraud would be committed before the ballots got to the ballot worker to be counted. The point is, by allowing so much time for ballots to arrive, and for it to take so much time for ballots to be counted, reeks of fraud. The Supreme Court should definitely fix this, and it appears they will.
