Michigan judge rules ballots received up to 14 days after Election Day will count

[Nevilledog]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2020/09/18/trump-biden-live-updates/#link-RE6VBIQVNZDNTJCQFOCB5C44YU

Michigan election officials must count mail ballots postmarked no later than Nov. 2 that are received up to 14 days after Election Day, a state judge ruled Friday in a decision that could protect thousands of ballots from being tossed in a state that President Trump won by less than 11,000 votes in 2016.

Before the ruling, mail ballots in Michigan would not have counted if they were received after 8 p.m. on Election Day.

In issuing a preliminary injunction, Judge Cynthia Diane Stephens of the Michigan Court of Claims wrote that the statutory deadline for mail ballots was unconstitutional in light of the coronavirus pandemic and operational changes within the U.S. Postal Service, which she said threaten voters’ ability to cast mail ballots in a timely way.

“Where the current state of affairs has riddled that option with uncertainty after uncertainty, the Court concludes that the 8:00 p.m. ballot receipt deadline unnecessarily curtails the self-executing right to vote by absent voter ballot and to return that ballot by mail,” Stephens wrote in a 21-page order.

*snip*

[jorgevlorgan]

1. Do they even have the capacity to count everything before the deadline two weeks later?

[brush]

2. They should be able to count them in two whole weeks. The judge made a good ruling...

what with the chicanery going on at the Post Office with turmp lackey DeJoy in charge.

[samsingh]

3. i'm sure they do. Many States have been doing it for decades

[Indykatie]

4. My Concern Is Whether Ballots Will Have the Necessary Timely Postmark

What if ballots are backlogged at a post office and never processed. It also doesn't resolved the issue of the tubs of votes that always seem to be discovered at post offices after election day.

[roamer65]

5. I'm taking mine to my township hall.

[DetroitLegalBeagle]

6. Same

My wife or I will dropping ours off as well. We've had 2 priority USPS packages delayed 2 weeks now, and had 1 registered envelope take 5 weeks to arrive. And that one was just coming from Philadelphia, so its not like it was coast to coast or anything.

[roamer65]

7. THIS.

[llmart]

8. Me too.

I'm filling it out as soon as I get it and then dropping it off in person.

I'm pleased this judge made this decision. It's the right thing to do.