Two Years to Fortify American Elections The goal is to fix voting snafus before 2024. Yes, you, Pennsylvania.
State lawmakers convening in 2023 have an opportunity—some might say a duty—to improve their voting laws to head off trouble in the 2024 presidential election. Perhaps nowhere needs action more than Pennsylvania. During the recent midterms, according to new state data, 16,100 mail ballots were rejected because the voter wrote an incorrect date, or because the date, signature or secrecy envelope was missing.
That figure is larger than President Biden’s 2020 vote margin in two states, Georgia (11,779) and Arizona (10,457), and in a 2024 recount at least some of those Pennsylvania ballots would end up in court. Last year the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Pennsylvania was legally required to count ballots with missing dates, if they arrived on time. The Supreme Court vacated that judgment as moot. Then the Pennsylvania Supreme Court split 3-3 on the question. Next year, who knows?
Ambiguity about ballot validity is poison to public confidence in elections, and perhaps the Legislature can help by streamlining the requirements. State law also says local officials in Pennsylvania can’t start processing mail votes until 7 a.m. on Election Day, which means waiting and waiting for results in close races. Allowing pre-processing, a common practice in other states, ought to be a no-brainer.
Lawmakers elsewhere would also be wise to examine their election codes for hangups exposed over the past two years. Mail ballots in Wisconsin need a witness address, but the law doesn’t define “address.” What if voters in small towns put down only house numbers and street names, say, 155 Flapjack Boulevard, no city or ZIP Code? Smells like a candidate lawsuit.
Last year a Wisconsin activist demonstrated how easy it is to request someone else’s mail ballot. The state system asked for only a name and birthday. It then accepted a forwarding address where the ballot should be sent. Don’t try this at home, because the activist was eventually charged with fraud, but the Legislature might want to take a look before Russian trolls join the fun.
One response would be to follow Georgia and Florida, which both passed laws in 2021 that require voters to submit a state ID number, or other identification, when seeking a mail ballot. Neither of those jurisdictions came out of November’s midterms looking like a bastion of Jim Crow 2.0, so other states might consider adopting their model.
Congress’s recent reforms of the Electoral Count Act, the 1887 law that governs the Electoral College, also might necessitate state action, as University of Iowa law professor Derek Muller explained in a blog post last week. The new statute says if a state is hit by an “extraordinary and catastrophic” emergency, its presidential Election Day can be extended “as provided under laws of the State enacted prior to such day.” The reform says presidential electors are to be certified by the Governor, unless state law gives that job to a different executive, and the procedural timeline has been adjusted.
The past two years have underlined the importance of election integrity and public confidence in the ballot box. President Trump hasn’t recanted his claims that the 2020 election was stolen, and it’s possible he’ll be on the November ballot again in 2024. State lawmakers have a chance, while the pressure is off, to fix obvious holes. Like all human endeavors, no election is ever perfect, but to steal a line from the Constitution, American voting certainly could stand to be “more perfect.”
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