Republicans looking to gain an advantage by testing new U.S. Postal Service policy change could see their challenges backfire.
The Postal Service ended a seven-decade practice of postmarking mail when it's collected, but the new policy will allow mail to be postmarked when it arrives at processing facilities, meaning that ballots dropped into mailboxes on Election Day may not get stamped with a postmark until the following day, wrote MS NOW columnist Ryan Teague Beckwith.
"A quick piece of advice: If you are sending in your ballot on Election Day, take it to the counter and ask for it to be manually stamped or use a ballot drop box, if you have them in your area," Beckwith wrote.
Republicans have repeatedly attempted to throw out late-arriving ballots based on postmark technicalities. In 2020, Wisconsin Republicans fought to block grace periods for ballots postmarked by Election Day. Similar battles erupted in Pennsylvania and Nevada. Now, the Supreme Court will hear a case brought by the Mississippi Republican Party challenging grace periods entirely, with the conservative Fifth Circuit already ruling in their favor.
"This fight puts legalistic parsing of voting law above the basic rights of voters to have their ballots counted and above common sense," Beckwith wrote.
"A voter who does everything right casting a mail-in ballot has no way to ensure that the Postal Service will give it the correct postmark or even promptly deliver it — especially if they are sending it from another country or a military base overseas," he added. "Do you even know if you live within 50 miles of a USPS regional processing center? Throwing out those voters’ ballots is punishing them for someone else’s conduct."
The postmark policy would especially hurt hurt voters with disabilities, senior citizens, Americans who live overseas, active-duty service members and those who live in rural areas – and most of those demographics aren't notably left-leaning.
"In other words," the columnist concluded, "Republicans who fight to throw out those late-arriving ballots may end up hurting their own voters."