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CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Here is a basic standard for vote counting that we have let slip away. We ought to expect election results on Election Night.
We cast our votes on a Tuesday; we wake up Wednesday morning and know who the winner is. The idea that a state like California now takes a month to count their vote is unacceptable. It leave too much of a margin for cheating.
In an era where so many people are infatuated with mail-in voting, we can still get election results the same night with a simple change. For a vote to count, it must arrive at the clerk’s office before the polls close. That’s not too much to ask. If a voter insists on the privilege of voting by mail, that voter has the responsibility of getting their ballot into the postal system in time – perhaps a week beforehand to overcome any possible delays.
Allowing ballots to arrive days or weeks after election day causes too many integrity problems.
After election day, the losing side knows how many votes they must produce to snatch victory from defeat. And there are ways to get ballots into the system after the polls are closed.
For instance, many companies have their own pre-paid postage meters where the date is set manually. A voter who has access to their company’s mailroom at their office and post-date a ballot to election day and drop it into the mail a day late. Most of those older postage meters have been retired and replaced, but not all of them. If you have a co-conspiritor at the post office, ballots can be hand cancelled with any date a postal clerk wishes. If you think the highly unionized, highly liberal USPS workforce would never do such a thing, well… And in some states voters write in the date on the outer envelope. They are “on their honor” as to weather their ballot was cast late or not.
The problem with ballots trickling in for days after election day is more than just a bad look – where one candidate has the lead, and sees it slowly evaporate day by day. It’s that we don’t have an airtight system to make sure late ballots aren’t being put into play.
Change the laws – ballots must arrive in time to be counted, before, not after the polls close. Then we can know who won on election night, not a month later.
Chris Conley
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