I noticed a Supreme Court episode yesterday....arguing over 'counting' votes past election day.
Roughly 19 states (Ala is one)....allow for mail-in votes to be counted after election day. Some allow a day or two....some allow almost 3 weeks.
1978....I was stationed in West Germany, and we were all told....to vote....do it as early/quickly as possible, and mail in the ballot at least seven days prior. The Air Force was flying at least twice a day from Frankfurt....to get ballots to the East Coast. The warning given....if your ballot didn't get to the state by election day...it would NOT count.
The key problem in this whole 'count-business' for mail-in-voting? Well....the postal system.
While stationed at Bitburg (1993)....this topic came up and someone had run a 'test' mail-in.....finding that a letter mailed on day ZERO....took around 12 days to reach some rural location of Idaho. Course, what they didn't test....if you mailed from north Idaho...to southern Idaho....it probably took 6 days to reach the end-point.
In Alabama....if you were to mail from your house....to the guy six houses down....the letter gets picked up. Then it gets dumped into a bag at the local post office, and sent to Birmingham (3 hours away)....then gets checked....to come back to the local area, and then delivered to the neighbor. Amount of time involved? You can figure a minimum of three days....probably five days if mailed on a Thursday.
My general advice....if you were living overseas....hand the ballot to FEDEX, and feel pretty sure of its arrival in 72 hours.
The court action? Most folks think the 19 states will be directed to count only up to election day.
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