(The Center Square) – Appreciation for the U.S. Supreme Court “recognizing the practical reality” and rejecting a proposal involving the Postal Service and mailed ballots in elections has been expressed by North Carolina first-term Democratic Attorney General Jeff Jackson.
The nation’s high court, by 7-2 decision, said the petition to restrict mail ballots for the midterms should not go forward. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas were in dissent.
“In a 7-2 vote, the Supreme Court just agreed with us that the Postal Service’s last-minute changes to mail-in voting were a recipe for chaos,” Jackson said in a statement. “Ballots in North Carolina have already started going out and coming back. The election is underway. It would have been impossible for the Postal Service to implement a whole new system in time for the election – especially since the new system doesn’t even exist yet.”
North Carolina has the nation’s longest and arguably most accessible way to vote. Any registered voter can request an absentee by mail ballot, and nearly 50,000 of them were out on Sept. 4. Oct. 20 is the last day to request; Oct. 9 is the last day to register; and potential voters can same-day register during the early in-person period of Oct. 15-31.
Election Day when polls close at 7:30 p.m. is the last opportunity for voters to get their mail ballots into respective county elections board offices.
“As Justice Kavanaugh put it, ‘state and local officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections,’” Jackson said. “We appreciate the court recognizing the practical reality of the situation. Voting has begun. You don’t change the rules in the middle of the election.”
The proposal from the president’s administration was adoption of a uniform envelope style with submitted lists of eligible voters to an online portal. Those without compliance could be refused by the Postal Service.
California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and Washington are the eight states doing all-mail election, or universal mail-in voting.
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