by Jeff Childers
Yesterday, the Hill ran an encouraging election integrity story headlined, “Republicans head to court in expanding battle about overseas ballots.”
The latest frontline in the election integrity war revolves around overseas ballots. For some reason, Republicans object to the existing rules. Currently, to obtain mail-in ballots, U.S. citizens living abroad must navigate a stressful, hyper-rigorous identity verification process by legibly printing their name in all caps on a postcard.
Actually, applicants may use lowercase letters. Even so, it’s not easy or anything. They still have to spell their name right. Mostly right. Well, at least pretty close.
Also oddly, Republicans have noticed that, over the past couple election cycles, the numbers of overseas voters has exploded, and they almost all vote Democrat. This explains why they call the group Military and Overseas Voters, even though the military portion is a tiny fraction of the whole.
The GOP has sued in at least three tossup states, Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina. Democrats responded with four clever arguments, none of which deny the massive opportunity for voter fraud when invisible folks in foreign countries can get ballots without verifying their ID. First, Democrats argued that while the rules may not be perfect, they are still the rules, and Republicans have no evidence that fraud occurred.
Second, they complained that Republicans have filed at the wrong time: before the election. Third, Democrats argued Republicans are just trying to tee up post-election challenges, by filing now so those future cases won’t get dismissed like last time in 2020, for filing at the wrong time: after the election.
Fourth, Democrats argued that, without at least a little flexibility around the mail-in ballot rules, they can’t ever win. Okay, I added that one, they didn’t actually say it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.
All in all, these lawsuits challenging unverifiable foreign ballots are great news. It’s ironic how Democrats always complain about the timing. File the case too early, and they will say it’s not yet ripe, because there’s no imminent harm. Democrats may, however, be right that the Republicans are using the lawsuits to set up their post-election challenges.
As you well remember, many judges dismissed Republicans’ elections cases in 2020, holding that evidence of fraud was irrelevant since the procedural lawsuits could have been brought before the election, so that procedural changes could have been made before voters relied on the challenged rules. In other words, sorry, but you should have brought this to me before the election.
Now, four years later, judges must wrestle with their own rules. They must rule now, before the vote, and before there can be any evidence of voting fraud. These judges want to say “come back after the election with your evidence of fraud,” but they can’t, since they sagely opined the precise opposite last time.
In essence, judges invited these pre-election challenges. Now the judicial chickens have come home to roost.
