By: John C. Lesher
Several days ago I wrote a blog addressing the fuss being raised about the US Post Office being unable to handle an alleged deluge of mail-in ballots, thereby creating a chaotic vote count situation this coming November. My opinion was—and is—that this is a false issue because the additional volume of mail being considered is only a tiny fraction of what the Postal Service handles routinely. The problem as I see it is not delivery—it is one of counting those ballots in the typical state where automated equipment is lacking and where each ballot must be manually opened, verified and tabulated. Simply put, the manual vote counting process takes time—lots of it.
The fear is that this attenuated manual vote-count process, which has never been seen in America in the volumes anticipated, will result in a significant delay in the reporting of election results. In prior election cycles the typical state had only a tiny percentage of its ballots received by mail and results were verified and posted a few hours after polls closed.
Relatively small numbers of service members, diplomats and business personnel with foreign postings were the primary users of the mail-in privilege, but Corona-19 changed all that and now many states, including your author’s domicile of New Jersey, will send every registered voter a mail-in ballot, which might or might not be used. Other states are encouraging citizens to request a mail-in ballot-- Wisconsin reportedly has received well over a million such requests. Guesstimates of upwards of 80 million mail-in votes being cast are bruited about without any real knowledge on the part of those who spread such “facts.” However, if these large volume estimates are realized, the potential for significant reporting delays is a very disturbing possibility. It will be heaven for conspiracy theorists.
The Washington Post (editorial) and the New York Times (general news article) separately published confirmation of the fears surrounding the potential for delayed election results caused by the inability of states to tabulate all those mail-in ballots in anything close to a reasonable period of time. The issue is not just one of counting delays caused by the sheer hours and days required to process votes one by one manually. An accompanying issue is that when the many states who decided to send universal ballots to their electorates began their planning, a minor detail escaped them. I say “minor” with a heavy dose of sarcasm.
Each state has a legal date by which a mail-in ballot must be received and therefore be eligible for computation. These receipt dates have been in the statute books for many years. Twenty-eight states have dates for receipt on November 2nd (2 of the 28) or on 2020’s Election Day- November 3rd. The expectation is that November 2nd and 3rd in those 28 states will witness an extremely heavy volume of mail-ins and the days-long process of manual counting and delayed results will only begin at that time. Unfortunately those 28 states are the good guys who will lead the vote count. Many of the other 22 states and the District of Columbia will be far behind.
It seems that many of our elected state officials, particularly the governors, in their rush to prove their anti-Covid credentials, ordered universal mail-in balloting without considering those statutory dates of receipt. For example, my state of New Jersey has required that every registered voter receive a ballot by mail, but—whoops---the governor and legislature forgot to adjust the mandated return date for those ballots. That date is November 10th, a full week after Election Day. I must assume that this means New Jersey won’t be able to announce its official tally for dog catchers, let alone for the Congress and the Presidency, for a further week or so. I sincerely hope I am wrong about this, but I fear I am not. New Jersey is joined on November 10th by Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, New York and Utah. California? Our largest state, with 12% of America’s population and, presumably, 12% of America’s votes, doesn’t require mail-ins to be received until November 17th. Texas, our second largest state? November 4th; Illinois? November 18th; Washington? November 23.
The assumed delays in official results for this coming election have potential constitutional implications. Can you imagine a particular person in Washington quietly and meekly awaiting those results, or calmly accepting claims of victory by others? At the very least there will be a Tweet storm. Distrust and suspicion will be common currency.
This is a self-inflicted wound to our tradition of rapidly delivered, credible election results. Where it will play out—quite possibly in our court system—is anyone’s guess. All I know is that we didn’t think it through. Massive mail-in voting requires an array of automated equipment that will minimize the manual processes associated with opening, verifying and counting each envelope, as well as legislative action by the many states to move forward their mandated dates for receipt of ballots so that there is sufficient time for a definitive count to be delivered on Election Day.