I was actually wondering about this, since a close relative of mine probably won’t make it to election day: if you legally cast your ballot (mail in or absentee), but die before Election Day, does your vote still count?
this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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Yea. Not only that, when you hear about "dead people voting", this is often the explanation.
Also the thousands of people who die on election day, a non-zero number of which voted earlier that day.
The other big chunk is people who have the same or a similar name. Like "It says here David Jones died five years ago, but David Jones voted today. Suspicious?" "Dude, I'm David Jones Jr. The David Jones who died was my dad, David Jones Sr. Dick." Or whatever.
I am a IIIrd, the third person down my male line with the same first, middle, and last name
I'm the 5th with our exact initials, too
One time, while applying for college, I was told I'd already used my GI bill allotment back in '55. Uh..... That was grandpa, and he died over 30 years before I was born, how did you mix us up?!?!
(Also, I was never in the military and this was entirely irrelevant to me they just brought it up as something I couldn't do)
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Depends on the state. Looks like Carter is registered in Georgia. According to an article from 2020 when Republicans were bald face lying that long dead people were voting a lot, someone from the Georgia Secretary of State's office is quoted as saying secrecy rules don't allow rejecting a ballot when a voter dies before Election Day.
“You can’t go back and get that ballot back out. It’s just physically impossible, given the privacy rules in our state,”. May or may not still be accurate, or may have never been accurate, but that's what the first article I found when searching says.
That makes a lot of sense, thanks!
Depends on the state. Georgia, where Carter lives, is silent on the issue so it should count. Some state explicitly allow counting them, some states explicitly forbid counting. Some states are silent on the issue.
Once the ballot is cast, there's no way to pull it out. If you could, that would violate the secrecy of the ballot. They would be able to know who anyone voted for.
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No president is perfect. Some are much worse or much better than others. The US would greatly benefit from having more Jimmy Carters as president.
His failure was not including Washington insiders into his cabinet. It's the lesson that people often forget. The president can't be a total outsider and expect to be successful.
I could see that being an issue for sure. But I will still say that falls well short of the things some other president's have done.
Remember when there was a crisis at a nuclear power plant, and the president rushed to the scene...to help, because he's a qualified nuclear engineer? I don't, I wasn't born yet when that happened.
I wasn't either. But when I heard the story I wished we would have another president who cared like that.
And was an engineer or someone else who has had a job that actually matters.
It's not all roses and rainbows: Thatcher was a chemical engineer, and the only thing she engineered while in power was the downfall of England as a world power.
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I've already come to view Jimmy Carter as an unappreciated rockstar, and I didn't even know this story. I just Googled it for those interested. It doesn't seem like it was when he was president, but still completely badass/downright heroic.
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And it’s a Georgia vote so it matters.
All votes matter.
All votes should matter. Thanks to gerrymandering and the electoral college rules, not a lot actually do
Specifically for president. They absolutely matter for local elections.
Yes, but some much more than others.
the electoral college used by slave states to pad their votes with the 3/5ths compromise would like to have a word with you.
Not according to the electoral college.
This is actually an interesting legal edge case. What happens if someone casts an absentee ballot, but then dies before election day? It turns out that it's actually very state-specific. Half of states have no provisions for how such a case is handled. Of those that address it, some explicitly allow the votes to be counted, and some explicitly prohibit these votes to be counted.
https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/counting-absentee-ballots-after-a-voter-dies
It's a pretty interesting bit of legal trivia. The whole principle of absentee ballots is that you are not really casting your vote 'early.' It's not like they publish the results of absentee ballots ahead of time. Really you're effectively saying, "I can't make it on election day." An argument can be made that they shouldn't be counted. Why should someone who happens to get a ballot in early and dies be able to have their vote counted, but someone who was planning to vote on election day, but died in the interim, won't have it counted? On the other hand, a good argument can be made that we shouldn't punish those who plan ahead, and as a general rule we just accept the ballots out of respect for the recently deceased. It's interesting that the states that count them or don't are distributed fairly randomly across regions and the political spectrum; it's not really a partisan thing.
But it is a bit of legal trivial that yes, in some states, the dead are literally allowed to vote under certain very specific circumstances.
Still crazy that so many votes don't matter. That said, everyone should vote. No excuses.
Not even living in the country and I still managed it. Minimal fuss.
Early voting is voting.
What a lifetime this man has experienced.
And if he dies before the election, they will accuse him of voter fraud.
Diane Feinstein and Mitch McConnell both served in Congress well after they died.
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It would've been funny if immediately after casting his vote he dissolved into a beautiful light
He disappears in a flash of light. In his wake, he leaves an affordable housing complex behind.
Also, a lifetime supply of peanuts to all residents who aren't allergic 🥜
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Congrats Lt. Carter and some of us will be voting next week too.
My absentee ballot finally came this week. I'm so excited to get my vote in and be done with all of this nonsense.
You'll be even more excited when the 2028 campaign starts in three weeks!
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