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
it looks like ballots can only be challenged before they’re counted, which matches with what you just said.
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.
The answer is different in different states. https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/counting-absentee-ballots-after-a-voter-dies
I believe that depends on the state the vote was cast in
in the battleground states: likely not because you need sufficient justification for going absentee/mail; something that isn’t common to the other states.
No president is perfect. Some are much worse or much better than others. The US would greatly benefit from having more Jimmy Carters as president.
His failure was not including Washington insiders into his cabinet. It’s the lesson that people often forget. The president can’t be a total outsider and expect to be successful.
I could see that being an issue for sure. But I will still say that falls well short of the things some other president’s have done.
Remember when there was a crisis at a nuclear power plant, and the president rushed to the scene…to help, because he’s a qualified nuclear engineer? I don’t, I wasn’t born yet when that happened.
I wasn’t either. But when I heard the story I wished we would have another president who cared like that.
And was an engineer or someone else who has had a job that actually matters.
It’s not all roses and rainbows: Thatcher was a chemical engineer, and the only thing she engineered while in power was the downfall of England as a world power.
Every time I am reminded that she was a chemical engineer, I picture Thatcher as a more-demure-yet-viciously-effective Yzma.
Edit: And Mr. “Too Tall To Be A Bus Driver” John Major as a blond Kronk?! Oh yeah, it’s all coming together.
Honestly I feel like career politicians are part of the problem. We need people who have done other jobs and have experience outside of political circles. No more actors or reality stars though, I don’t think this country could survive more of those lol.
I’ve already come to view Jimmy Carter as an unappreciated rockstar, and I didn’t even know this story. I just Googled it for those interested. It doesn’t seem like it was when he was president, but still completely badass/downright heroic.
I vote for this comment
My dad always said Jimmy Carter was too good of a man to be a good president.
And it’s a Georgia vote so it matters.
All votes matter.
All votes should matter. Thanks to gerrymandering and the electoral college rules, not a lot actually do
Specifically for president. They absolutely matter for local elections.
Yes, but some much more than others.
the electoral college used by slave states to pad their votes with the 3/5ths compromise would like to have a word with you.
Not according to the electoral college.
This is actually an interesting legal edge case. What happens if someone casts an absentee ballot, but then dies before election day? It turns out that it’s actually very state-specific. Half of states have no provisions for how such a case is handled. Of those that address it, some explicitly allow the votes to be counted, and some explicitly prohibit these votes to be counted.
https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/counting-absentee-ballots-after-a-voter-dies
It’s a pretty interesting bit of legal trivia. The whole principle of absentee ballots is that you are not really casting your vote ‘early.’ It’s not like they publish the results of absentee ballots ahead of time. Really you’re effectively saying, “I can’t make it on election day.” An argument can be made that they shouldn’t be counted. Why should someone who happens to get a ballot in early and dies be able to have their vote counted, but someone who was planning to vote on election day, but died in the interim, won’t have it counted? On the other hand, a good argument can be made that we shouldn’t punish those who plan ahead, and as a general rule we just accept the ballots out of respect for the recently deceased. It’s interesting that the states that count them or don’t are distributed fairly randomly across regions and the political spectrum; it’s not really a partisan thing.
But it is a bit of legal trivial that yes, in some states, the dead are literally allowed to vote under certain very specific circumstances.
Still crazy that so many votes don’t matter. That said, everyone should vote. No excuses.
Not even living in the country and I still managed it. Minimal fuss.
And let’s hope he lives to see her elected.
Even better if he sees Trump in prison.
Early voting is voting.
What a lifetime this man has experienced.
And if he dies before the election, they will accuse him of voter fraud.
Diane Feinstein and Mitch McConnell both served in Congress well after they died.
Wait, Mitch McConnell is dead?
Look at Mitch McConnell and tell me that’s not a reanimated corpse.
That’s just how 200-year-old tortoises naturally look.
Did he ever live?
wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t even wait that long
It would’ve been funny if immediately after casting his vote he dissolved into a beautiful light
He disappears in a flash of light. In his wake, he leaves an affordable housing complex behind.
Also, a lifetime supply of peanuts to all residents who aren’t allergic 🥜
Reminds me of a picture book I had as a kid, except instead of Jimmy Carter it was a turtle
Blue lightning as Sam Beckett leaps away to the next problem he has to fix.
Congrats Lt. Carter and some of us will be voting next week too.
My absentee ballot finally came this week. I’m so excited to get my vote in and be done with all of this nonsense.
You’ll be even more excited when the 2028 campaign starts in three weeks!
If he died on Nov. 5th, would they invalidate his vote?
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Up until the 1880s pretty much all Americans ballots weren’t private. Some states still technically aren’t private.
America isn’t a true democracy anyway with its Gerrymandering, two party system, and registration to vote.
Voting registration isn’t anti-democratic if it’s very easy, like it is here in Australia. It’s done online (and other methods) and very painless. If you don’t move, you never need to update your registration.
It’s done online (and other methods) and very painless. If you don’t move, you never need to update your registration.
And in actual democracies you’re registered automatically when turning voting age (usually 18) and gets updates automatically when moving. Obviously, when you have a monarch, you’re not living in a true democracy.
Come to think of it, we have a system where we update our details and it updates it across all other government agencies (this is optional), but I don’t think it automatically updates your voting registration.
Room for improvement.
Oh and yeah, fuck the queen.
Edit: yes, the queen specifically for presiding over the sacking of Whitlam
and gets updates automatically when moving.
In any good democracy the government doesn’t know where you moved to until you tell them. Hence the need.
In any good democracy the government doesn’t know where you moved to until you tell them. Hence the need.
They already know then they ask for taxes to be paid. Requirement for voter registration is voter suppression.
Aside from your needlessly hostile response — They can tell if you voted. Your ballot is linked to your name.
“if voted” is different from “voted for”. In a true democracy it must not be traceable who someone voted for. It simply cannot be the case in a proper democracy that the people who voted for the opponent get punished for their vote after transfer of power.
The original question was whether legally they could toss his ballot if he died before Election Day. I think the state probably has the means to locate a ballot.
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I remember a oneliner from that year, from the TV show Maude:
“Everything is so confusing nowadays. Today I saw a Carter sticker on a Ford, a Ford sticker on a Chevy, and a Dole sticker on a banana.”
A Ford sticker on a Chevy? God’ll get you for that one.
I love Maude so much. Honestly one of my favorites
We might really need an age limit if he’s running again 52 years
If he’s running again in 52 years, then I’ll have serious questions about what I know about the fundamental rules of life on this planet, so maybe he should be president again at that point.
I thought his goal was peace in Palestine not apartheid, and definitely not genocide.
Hence not voting for the lunatic wannabe despot.
Harris hasn’t come out in disagreement with Biden’s policy over the last year.
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the security of Israel must be guaranteed
The title is provocative, but the plan inside is bothsidesism.
inb4 he dies of a heart attack immediately after casting his vote
it’s georgia so i’m expecting them to invalidate it somehow and probably after he’s died so that no one can fight it.
If he dies in the next month we’re gonna have problems
