Virginia's total might not be over by tomorrow night...

[acroyear]

McCain sues to force Va. to count military ballots:

RICHMOND, Va. - John McCain's campaign sued Virginia's electoral board Monday, hours before the election, seeking to force the state to count late-arriving overseas military ballots.

The lawsuit asks a federal judge to order the State Board of Elections to count any overseas absentee ballots sent by November 4 and received by local election officials as late as November 14.

McCain claims the rights of military voters are protected by the federal Uniform and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Rights Act of 1986.

The campaign's complaint says that Virginia military voters posted overseas who support the Republican nominee will be denied their right to vote unless the court grants the order.

No hearing was scheduled by early Monday afternoon.

Now, I am all for ensuring that everybody gets the vote (and it doesn't matter who they support, Democrats should be pulling for this as well if they don't want to admit to hypocrisy).

However, there's one thing in the way: we don't know what the gap is, but we DO know how many absentee ballots are potentially coming in.  So the rules for counting absentees should be just like they always are: if the gap between the first and second is bigger than the total number of absentee ballots, then there's no reason to count them.

If the gap is smaller, than the finals should wait for all of the time the law requires for the absentee ballots to arrive.  If that time is 10 days, then fine.  We wait.

Back in the day, it would be over a month before the country found out who won, 'cause the electoral college actually had to take time to meet with the totals they were given and few states could find out what the other states knew.

On the other hand, I want to know who said that Virginia wasn't going to wait?  Who said what that actually led to the McCain suit in the first place?

Mind you, I do expect the total absentee ballot to be bigger than the gap, because of how many early voters there were (all of whom are technically absentees).

More details:

McCain lawsuit asks federal court to order Va. to count late overseas military ballots -- Newsday.com:

That lawsuit alleges that ballots for overseas military voters were mailed too late to ensure they are returned by the deadline. Defendants are the chairwoman, vice chairman and executive secretary of the state elections board.

A 1986 federal law requires ballots to be mailed to military voters in foreign countries at least 45 days before the election, which this year would have been Sept. 20. The lawsuit alleges the state didn't have the ballots printed and sent to local officials by then, meaning they may not have been mailed overseas until October.

Ashley L. Taylor Jr., an attorney for McCain, said tens of thousands of oversees military absentee ballots could be voided unless the deadline is extended.

"The last thing you want is to have a service member in Afghanistan or Iraq who received his ballot too late not being able to vote in this election," Taylor said.

Ok, so it appears the 10 day delay is somewhat arbitrary, based on a guestimate of the last postmarked date relative to Sept 20th.  Still, the state should know how many it mailed to military personal and be able to make a decision, AFTER tomorrow's counts (of votes and absentees already submitted), whether or not it needs to wait for any missing votes to arrive.

Technically, VA law says 7pm tomorrow and that's that.

Comments

[capi.livejournal.com]

A *lot* of people use mail-in (absentee) ballots these days, too. I hope they don't just forget about us! We try to get those in early, but you gotta wait til those are in!

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

Well, there are deadlines (different for each state). VA is one where they aren't supposed to wait, that they have to have arrived by today (fedex and ups accepted). the issue is that the military act McCain is citing says they're supposed to get 45 days, and VA was late about it.

Some states do have grace periods but they keep tight track of how many they're supposed to receive (most states do that) and won't count them if they don't need to because there is already a winner.

Do note that just because an absentee ballot isn't needed to be counted for the Presidential race doesn't mean it wouldn't need to be counted for close races in congressional, state, local elections, and referendums.