I was researching voting information on uncontested, unopposed candidates, why they remain on the ballot when there isn't anyone qualified to "write-in" and sub sequentially no one for us to vote for against them. Instead this came up on my search: https://www.findlaw.com/voting/my-voting-guide/can-i-leave-blanks-on-a-voting-ballot.htmlCan I Leave Blanks on a Voting Ballot?
Created by FindLaw's team of legal writers and editors | Last updated March 16, 2020
There's nothing illegal or wrong about leaving some spaces on a ballot blank. By law, all ballots are to be counted whether or not they're completed.
Voters often don't feel sufficiently informed about a candidate, a race, or a referendum issue, and would rather leave those portions of a ballot empty instead of casting an uninformed vote.
While it's fine to abstain from voting or leave blanks on a ballot because you feel you lack knowledge, experts recommend that you do what you can to fill out an entire ballot. At the very least, they say, you should make a special effort to vote in the races and ballot issues that are likely to affect you directly: state legislature, city council, school board, and referendums that will impact where you live.
28 Million Mail-In Ballots Went Missing in Last Four ElectionsTo illustrate the risk, Churchwell notes that in 2016
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by garnering over 2.8 million more votes than Donald Trump. But nearly 6 million unaccounted mail-in ballots were never counted in 2016, more than twice her margin in the popular vote. The potential to affect elections by chasing down unused mail-in ballots and make sure they get counted – using methods that may or may not be legal – is great.
Between 2012 and 2018, 28.3 million
mail-in ballots remain unaccounted for, according to data from the federal Election Assistance Commission.
The missing ballots amount to nearly one in five of all absentee ballots and ballots mailed to voters residing in states that do elections exclusively by mail.States and local authorities simply have no idea what happened to these ballots since they were mailed – and the figure of 28 million missing ballots is likely even higher because some areas in the country, notably Chicago, did not respond to the federal agency’s survey questions. This figure
does not include ballots that were spoiled, undeliverable, or came back for any reason.Although there is no evidence that the millions of missing ballots were used fraudulently, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, which compiled the public data provided from the Election Assistance Commission, says that the
sheer volume of them raises serious doubts about election security.These questions are particularly relevant as the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing states across the country to rapidly expand vote-by-mail operations in an election year. Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Ron Wyden have proposed the Natural Disaster and Emergency Ballot Act of 2020, a bill that would allow every eligible voter the
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/04/24/28_million_mail-in_ballots_went_missing_in_last_four_elections_143033.html#!
In Georgia, too, young voters, first-time voters, and Black voters were far more likely than others to have their ballots
rejected for mismatched signatures or for being incorrectly completed in 2018, one study found.
"Young people use one signature when they register to vote, and then they go off to college, become very creative, and their signature changes," Unger said. "I'm not ready to fall on my sword over this, but I think
it's possible that signature matching could be the hanging chad of 2020."
Community Forum
Topic: Voting in the upcoming election (Read 4105 times)
May 04, 2012, 05:55:44 pm
