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CltAltAcctDel t1_iv9yi9a wrote

Act 77 was widely supported in both House and Senate then signed by a Democrat governor. So why is following the bipartisan law suddenly partisan? And is an onerous burden to sign and date an envelope?

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StupiderIdjit t1_ivadc6h wrote

Bipartisan law passed by Republican majorities* to boot.

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CltAltAcctDel t1_ivado7f wrote

The democrat governor could have vetoed it and the democrats who voted for it could have voted no but they didn’t.

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StupiderIdjit t1_ivadtqb wrote

Oh I know. It was a good law. That's why it got bipartisan support. I'm just saying it's disingenuous for Republicans to suggest anything otherwise now.

Edit: We're talking about different things. My bad. I was taking about when republicans were on board with expanding mail in voting in 2019, now suddenly it was a Democrat plot.

Have you seen the date spot everyone is talking about? There's no format for it. They're going to use it to throw out ballots. That's the point. Create some minute detail that you must get right, then throw out the ballots that don't meet it.

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HonBurgher t1_ivdfbnf wrote

The issue becomes whether the government can make up and enforce certain parts of laws to unnecessarily raise the bar for voting, or just catch enough people making dumb mistakes to cut into their margins or discourage them from voting in the future.

Yes, the law says you "shall" sign and date your ballot. But did you know that the law also says that if you vote in person, you "shall" shut a privacy curtain or door behind you, and "shall" fold your ballot before handing it over to the poll workers to be stuck in the box to be counted? Have you ever voted at a polling place with cardboard screens instead of curtains, or stuck your ballot into a blank folder, or just turned it over without folding it? Should everyone who didn't shut a curtain or door, or fold their ballot have their vote disqualified, or does the privacy-preserving purpose of that rule have other methods of fulfillment that don't justify tossing all those votes? The language is the same as the date provision, but you have to look at the purpose of it and whether enforcement of that language is material to that purpose, if it has one.

That's the "materiality" argument that this case is making (it had been made before and was accepted by a federal appeals court, but got tossed out by SCOTUS on a technicality; the state's Supreme Court was short a judge and tied 3-3 on whether throwing out all these undated/wrongly-dated ballots violated federal civil rights) -- and the argument will be very important if any election in the state is close enough for these ballots to matter.

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