Vote-By-Mail

“They’re looking for every advantage they can get, and they’ve calculated that this is a way that they can win more seats,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for Common Cause, a nonpartisan democracy advocacy organization. “Research has shown that absentee ballots are more likely to be discarded if they are voted by young people and people of color, which are not generally seen as the Republican base.”  Albert said legal battles over mail ballot eligibility have the potential to delay results and even change outcomes. In some cases, the disputes could wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

“What we saw in 2020 was this effort to undermine the elections, but, for the most part, it happened after the elections,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at the organization Common Cause, which advocates on democracy issues. “This time what we are seeing is the prep beforehand.” ... Albert, of Common Cause, said that the demands around the country that more Republican workers be hired could be a precursor for attempts after the election to attempt to toss out ballots from election sites in dispute. She said she’s worried that Republicans “are going to basically say, ‘If an election wasn’t run exactly perfect – if we didn’t have an even split of poll workers – then, all of those ballots don’t count,’ which is absolutely ridiculous and nonsensical. An election has never run perfect in the history of the world.”

“I expect to see what we saw in 2020,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for Common Cause, a nonpartisan voter education and advocacy group. “Election officials will be counting votes, some results will come in late and bad actors will be trying to play political games to undermine people’s confidence in the outcome.”

“It will be a while before we have results” as a result of the litigation, said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause, a watchdog group based in Washington, D.C., in a webinar Tuesday. In Pennsylvania, election deniers are already planning to challenge the results if the election doesn’t go their way, according to Khalif Ali, executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania. “Pennsylvania is ground zero for the battle over the freedom to vote,” he said. In Georgia, voters have to include a copy of a government-issued ID with their absentee ballot application. A “live wet signature” is also needed, according to Aunna Dennis, executive director of Common Cause Georgia. An electronic signature won’t be accepted.

“We were saying, in Pennsylvania you have to pass something to deal with pre-processing,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for Common Cause, a nonprofit active in monitoring elections. “To me, at this point, it is purposeful. They want chaos. If you refuse to pass laws, you are asking for what’s next.” ... The lies Republicans spread about the post-election vote count highlight a mostly overlooked aspect of elections: that they do not end on Election Day. Ballots must be processed, counted, canvassed and certified. When elections are extremely close, recounts may be in order depending on each state’s recount laws.  “In the past, election protection broadly has been about focusing on how we are preparing up to the election ― the day before and the day of the election,” said Quentin Turner, director of Common Cause Michigan. “But in the past couple years, that has changed. The days leading up to and on Election Day are the pregame. The work continues on in just as an intense way after the election. And that is where the most opportunities are for people who want to sow discord or doubt in the process.”

Although significant attention has focused on the more than 400 anti-voter bills introduced (several dozen of which have become law) in state legislatures since the insurrection, some federal bills also portend a dangerous trend. Congressional Republicans have introduced more than 30 anti-voter bills since the insurrection that have largely gone unnoticed. These anti-voter bills telegraph what congressional MAGA Republicans would like to do: make it harder for certain Americans to vote.