‘Gearing Up for Election Season’ – One America News Network
OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
2:07 PM – Thursday, September 12, 2024
The 2024 presidential race’s first general election ballots are en route. With less than two months until November 5th arrives, Alabama officials began distributing them to absentee voters on Wednesday. However, mail-related “issues” have also begun to arise in a number of states.
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According to AP News, last Friday was supposed to be the start of North Carolina’s absentee ballot distribution, but that was postponed after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.) filed a lawsuit to have his name taken off the ballot.
After withdrawing and endorsing Republican contender Donald Trump, he launched comparable legal challenges in other states that are considered to be presidential battlegrounds.
The first presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump took place on Tuesday this week, and while the ballot milestone occurs in a state that is not a political battleground, it is a sign of how quickly Election Day is approaching after this summer’s party conventions.
“We’re ready to go,” said Sharon Long, deputy clerk in the Jefferson County circuit clerk’s office.
Meanwhile, in a few different states, early in-person voting for the election will start next week. The Ottawa County, Michigan, clerk, Justin Roebuck, told the Associated Press that his office will be prepared for the start of voting in his state.
“At this point in the cycle, it is one where we’re feeling, ‘Game on.’ We’re ready to do this. We’re ready to go,” he said. “We’ve done our best to educate our voters and communicate with confidence in that process.”
However, in the state of Kansas, in a letter to the U.S. postmaster general, the secretary of the state claimed that about 1,000 voters in the primary in Kansas were denied the right to vote because ballots that were mailed prior to Election Day in August arrived in county offices either past the deadline by more than three days or without a necessary postmark.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was informed by Secretary of State Scott Schwab, who is also the state’s lead elections officer, that there was reason for “extreme concern” regarding “a troubling pattern that persists in the U.S. Postal Service’s processing and handling of ballots.” He sent the identical letter to each of the six congressional delegates from Kansas.
According to Schwab, 18% of Kansans used their constitutional right to vote by mailing ballots in during the August primary. He claimed that around 1,000 of those voters, or 2% of all mail-in votes cast in Kansas, had their ballots not tallied “because of USPS administrative errors.”
“We implore you to take immediate and tangible corrective action to address the ongoing performance issues with USPS election mail service,” they added. “Failure to do so will risk limiting voter participation and trust in the election process.”
In addition, according to Schwab and other Kansas election officials, some votes arrive on time but lack postmarks, which prevents them from being counted in accordance with Kansas law. Furthermore, even though the Postal Service handled the ballot before the mail-in deadline, Schwab informed DeJoy that local postal clerks have informed election officials that they are not permitted to add postmarks afterwards.
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