[HN Gopher] What happens if someone votes by absentee/mail-in an...
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       What happens if someone votes by absentee/mail-in and dies before
       Election Day?
        
       Author : zdw
       Score  : 22 points
       Date   : 2024-10-01 20:56 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (ballotpedia.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (ballotpedia.org)
        
       | AStonesThrow wrote:
       | Look, it's a jurisdiction's problem that begins when they decide
       | to open the voting window to weeks rather than a single day.
       | 
       | If someplace permits early voting, then I don't see a moral or
       | ethical justification for nullifying a vote cast by someone who's
       | already legally cast those votes and submitted that ballot, which
       | is now out of their hands and in custody of the State.
       | 
       | If they want to disenfranchise dead people, then discontinue
       | mail-ins and early voting, and compel everyone to show up in
       | person again.
       | 
       | (I detested in-person election days, because I do all my research
       | ahead of time with actual ballot in hand, and I'd never make good
       | decisions in a claustrophobic little box, standing up, with
       | dozens in line waiting for me.)
        
       | segmondy wrote:
       | What happens if someone votes and dies before the vote is
       | tallied?
        
       | agubelu wrote:
       | The same thing as if someone votes and then gets ran over by a
       | car as they walk out of the polling station. If the vote was
       | legally emitted, it's counted.
        
         | Sniffnoy wrote:
         | You should actually read the article (which says that it
         | depends on the state) rather than just stating what you might
         | expect to be true!
        
       | hprotagonist wrote:
       | as always, it depends on which state you're in.
       | 
       | federalism, as a crude form of polyculture, is probably more boon
       | than bane.
        
       | posnet wrote:
       | What if someone votes, but the caesium atom decays and triggers
       | the poison vial to crack and fill the voting booth?
        
         | schmidtleonard wrote:
         | Then it's either completely rigged or perfectly fair, depending
         | on whether Trump lost or won (respectively).
        
       | loeg wrote:
       | What happens if someone votes in person and dies before polls
       | close later that day? The number of people this is relevant to as
       | a percentage of votes is miniscule.
        
       | shadowgovt wrote:
       | There's also an eventual-consistency effect at play.
       | 
       | If the County Elections Office doesn't learn someone died before
       | their ballot is decanted into the general collection for
       | counting, that's it. No way at that point to pull the ballot back
       | out because the source of the vote is anonymous.
        
       | luoc wrote:
       | I voted in the 2021 election for the current German government.
       | Later, I moved to Berlin, where they had to repeat the election
       | this spring due to some screw-ups back then (turns out running a
       | marathon on election day is not a good idea). So I was asked to
       | vote again and I did. I checked with the authorities and
       | everything is fine.
       | 
       | I suppose there's some noise in any voting system, and it's fine
       | if the magnitude is small and its distribution random. Looking at
       | the US, I'd be more worried about gerrymandering than a few votes
       | from the dead.
        
         | luoc wrote:
         | Mhm, I noticed the issue is not 100% clear from my description:
         | I eventually got two votes in the same election
        
         | appendix-rock wrote:
         | Yup. Precisely. A lot of election 'security' relies on this
         | premise.
        
       | jetrink wrote:
       | I think Missouri's policy is the most correct.
       | 
       | > Missouri prohibits such ballots from being counted if it is
       | proven that the voter died before polls opened and the ballot
       | envelope has not yet been opened.
       | 
       | It seems reasonable to me that to be an eligible voter in an
       | election, you must be alive. A ballot filled out in advance is
       | merely a piece of paper until it is officially cast by an
       | eligible voter on election day. If a voter dies before the polls
       | open and there is a system in place to detect this, their vote
       | should not be counted because they are no longer eligible.
       | Conversely, if the voter is alive even one second after the polls
       | open, their vote should be counted.
        
       | tedunangst wrote:
       | There should be an HN filter that rewrites "what happens if?" to
       | "what happens when." titles to preempt all the low effort
       | answers.
        
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       (page generated 2024-10-01 23:00 UTC)