I was actually wondering about this, since a close relative of mine probably won’t make it to election day: if you legally cast your ballot (mail in or absentee), but die before Election Day, does your vote still count?
The other big chunk is people who have the same or a similar name. Like “It says here David Jones died five years ago, but David Jones voted today. Suspicious?” “Dude, I’m David Jones Jr. The David Jones who died was my dad, David Jones Sr. Dick.” Or whatever.
I would love to know the winners of past elections counting only the votes of dead people.
Wouldn’t be surprised if Harris wins in the demography this time around. The greatest generation knows what it means to defeat fascists. But then again there are probably more boomers and anti vaxers dying these days.
Depends on the state. Looks like Carter is registered in Georgia. According to an article from 2020 when Republicans were bald face lying that long dead people were voting a lot, someone from the Georgia Secretary of State’s office is quoted as saying secrecy rules don’t allow rejecting a ballot when a voter dies before Election Day.
“You can’t go back and get that ballot back out. It’s just physically impossible, given the privacy rules in our state,”. May or may not still be accurate, or may have never been accurate, but that’s what the first article I found when searching says.
Depends on the state. Georgia, where Carter lives, is silent on the issue so it should count. Some state explicitly allow counting them, some states explicitly forbid counting. Some states are silent on the issue.
Once the ballot is cast, there’s no way to pull it out. If you could, that would violate the secrecy of the ballot. They would be able to know who anyone voted for.
~~I really don’t think this is true, ballots get pulled out all the time if they’re found to be invalid. If there’s an issue with how it’s filled out, like bubbling multiple entries or signature issues, stuff like that, if there’s an issue with their registration or the incredibly rare instances of actual voter fraud, all those ballots get pulled out unless they get corrected.
I guess I can kinda see your point about how if an individual ballot gets challenged and removed, and you see the overall vote count change by one you’d obviously know who that ballot was cast for. But in order for that to happen it would have to be an invalid ballot, so I’m not sure it’s really that important to keep a vote that didn’t count secret. Also in this particular case the person’s dead.
I’m certainly not advocating a law like this be passed, and maybe there’s some federal policy that would prevent it from being enforced, but logistically speaking I don’t see the problem.~~
Afaik in most democracies, ballots are verified as from being legit people, then anonimised , then checked for being valid (not spoilt ballots) then processed to see what they voted for.
During counting you can remove a ballot for being spoilt but not due to its caster being dead.
Interesting, that makes sense. I thought I’d heard about individual ballots being challenged in all the 2020 bs, but I just looked it up and it looks like ballots can only be challenged before they’re counted, which matches with what you just said. So probably what I’d heard is either challenges that came in before that point, or it was republican nonsense that was presumably shot down.
But yeah, verifying -> anonymizing -> counting and they can’t go backwards makes a lot of sense, and that would fundamentally prevent removing dead people. Thanks for explaining
in the battleground states: likely not because you need sufficient justification for going absentee/mail; something that isn’t common to the other states.
I was actually wondering about this, since a close relative of mine probably won’t make it to election day: if you legally cast your ballot (mail in or absentee), but die before Election Day, does your vote still count?
Yea. Not only that, when you hear about “dead people voting”, this is often the explanation.
Also the thousands of people who die on election day, a non-zero number of which voted earlier that day.
The other big chunk is people who have the same or a similar name. Like “It says here David Jones died five years ago, but David Jones voted today. Suspicious?” “Dude, I’m David Jones Jr. The David Jones who died was my dad, David Jones Sr. Dick.” Or whatever.
How many people are named John Smith?
I would love to know the winners of past elections counting only the votes of dead people.
Wouldn’t be surprised if Harris wins in the demography this time around. The greatest generation knows what it means to defeat fascists. But then again there are probably more boomers and anti vaxers dying these days.
Depends on the state. Looks like Carter is registered in Georgia. According to an article from 2020 when Republicans were bald face lying that long dead people were voting a lot, someone from the Georgia Secretary of State’s office is quoted as saying secrecy rules don’t allow rejecting a ballot when a voter dies before Election Day.
“You can’t go back and get that ballot back out. It’s just physically impossible, given the privacy rules in our state,”. May or may not still be accurate, or may have never been accurate, but that’s what the first article I found when searching says.
That makes a lot of sense, thanks!
Depends on the state. Georgia, where Carter lives, is silent on the issue so it should count. Some state explicitly allow counting them, some states explicitly forbid counting. Some states are silent on the issue.
Once the ballot is cast, there’s no way to pull it out. If you could, that would violate the secrecy of the ballot. They would be able to know who anyone voted for.
Ignore me, sounds like he’s probably right
~~I really don’t think this is true, ballots get pulled out all the time if they’re found to be invalid. If there’s an issue with how it’s filled out, like bubbling multiple entries or signature issues, stuff like that, if there’s an issue with their registration or the incredibly rare instances of actual voter fraud, all those ballots get pulled out unless they get corrected.
I guess I can kinda see your point about how if an individual ballot gets challenged and removed, and you see the overall vote count change by one you’d obviously know who that ballot was cast for. But in order for that to happen it would have to be an invalid ballot, so I’m not sure it’s really that important to keep a vote that didn’t count secret. Also in this particular case the person’s dead.
I’m certainly not advocating a law like this be passed, and maybe there’s some federal policy that would prevent it from being enforced, but logistically speaking I don’t see the problem.~~
Afaik in most democracies, ballots are verified as from being legit people, then anonimised , then checked for being valid (not spoilt ballots) then processed to see what they voted for.
During counting you can remove a ballot for being spoilt but not due to its caster being dead.
Interesting, that makes sense. I thought I’d heard about individual ballots being challenged in all the 2020 bs, but I just looked it up and it looks like ballots can only be challenged before they’re counted, which matches with what you just said. So probably what I’d heard is either challenges that came in before that point, or it was republican nonsense that was presumably shot down.
But yeah, verifying -> anonymizing -> counting and they can’t go backwards makes a lot of sense, and that would fundamentally prevent removing dead people. Thanks for explaining
I mean, in the US specifically, and everywhere else, they can be disregarded for not being valid during the counting process, see :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chad_(paper)#2000_United_States_presidential_election_controversy
or, if you’re more degenerate:
https://balatrogame.fandom.com/wiki/Hanging_Chad_(Joker)
EDIT : thank you for being polite, you’re welcome for my explaination.
Provisional ballots can be held back until a voter’s eligibility is verified but once a ballot is put into the general pool there is no way.
And that’s separate from not being able to count a ballot that was incorrectly filled. Those ballots are not tied to a specific voter.
I believe that depends on the state the vote was cast in
The answer is different in different states. https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/counting-absentee-ballots-after-a-voter-dies
in the battleground states: likely not because you need sufficient justification for going absentee/mail; something that isn’t common to the other states.