Maybe Florida Should Just Sit the Next Few Elections Out
I am lighting votive candles and burning incense in front of pictures of the Founders, asking them if we can please, for the love of god and for the sake of the republic, have their permission to allow the state of Florida sit out the next couple of election cycles. The state needs to go into the political concussion protocol at this point, and it should not be allowed to play again until everybody in its government passes a CAT scan.
I mean, what the absolute hell is this from the AP?
Florida officials say thousands of mailed ballots were not counted because they were delivered too late to state election offices. The Department of State late last week informed a federal judge that 6,670 ballots were mailed ahead of the Nov. 6 election but were not counted because they were not received by Election Day. The tally prepared by state officials includes totals from 65 of Florida’s 67 counties. The two counties yet to report their totals are Palm Beach, a Democratic stronghold in south Florida, and Polk in central Florida.
Under Florida law, ballots mailed inside the United States must reach election offices by 7 p.m. on Election Day. Overseas ballots are counted if they are received up to 10 days after the election. A group called VoteVets Action Fund along with two Democratic organizations filed a lawsuit a few days after the 2017 election that argued the ballots should count if they were mailed before Election Day. But U.S. District Judge Mark Walker said the restriction was reasonable and that Florida election officials have a right to establish deadlines. He turned down an emergency request that all properly postmarked ballots received up to 10 days after the election be counted.
The lawsuit, however, is still pending and Walker asked that state election officials report how many ballots were mailed before Election Day but ultimately were not counted. Walker was the judge involved in a half-dozen lawsuits that were filed following the razor-thin elections in Florida.
In a separate lawsuit filed last month, Walker gave voters extra time to fix their mail-in ballots if they were not counted because their signature on their ballot envelope did not match the one on file with local election officials. State officials testified in court that nearly 4,000 mailed-in ballots were set aside because local officials decided the signatures on did not match. The Department of State last week informed Walker that his ruling resulted in 637 votes being counted in the final totals.
It doesn't seem to be a hard problem. If you mailed your ballot before Election Day, it presumably has a postmark which says, you know, that it was mailed on a date prior to election day. I have tremendous faith in the competence of the United States Postal Service and the ability of its half-million embattled employees to keep the days of the month straight and to adjust their postmarking mechanisms accordingly.
Want unlimited access to Charlie? Join the fight against stupid HERE
So, if your ballot is postmarked before election day, it really shouldn't matter if the truck carrying it hits an alligator and spins into a nest of invasive pythons in the Everglades. It should be counted if it arrives within a decent interval after election day, a decent interval within a looser deadline than the one Florida has now. A week is not nearly long enough, especially if nearly 7,000 ballots were mailed perfectly legitimately, and in good faith, but not counted legitimately and in good faith because Florida. And we shouldn't even get into the fact that some ballots are being reconsidered because the signatures on the ballots were said not to match the signatures on file with local election officials.
I'm in favor of letting the pythons vote at this point.
Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page here.
('You Might Also Like',)
