TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (The News Service of Florida) - U.S. District Judge Mark Walker held several hearings Thursday in various lawsuits relating to last week’s general election.
One lawsuit in federal court Thursday challenges a state law requiring mail-in ballots to be received by county elections offices by 7 p.m. on Election Day.
The lawsuit was filed by the VoteVets Action Fund, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Lawyers for those groups say determining the validity of ballots based on a “received by” date, rather than pairing it with a postmark date, runs the risk of denying the right to vote to some Floridians.
The plaintiffs feel all ballots postmarked by Election Day should count. However, Leon County Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley, who testified in court, said moving back the deadline could have unintended consequences, as some voters will wait to the last minute to send in vote-by-mail ballots.
“Given human nature, if everyone knew they had an extra ten days to get it to us, the processing of that big volume of mail that we normally get done before Election Day, would transition to after Election Day," said Earley.
Earley said moving back the deadline could create a situation where a large number of ballots continue to trickle in, days after Election Day.
The federal court did not immediate rule on the case. Also Thursday, the same court sided with US Senator Bill Nelson, saying some voters will be given more time to fix signature problems with their vote-by-mail ballots.
However, the court also ruled against Nelson in another case, denying an extension of Thursday’s machine recount deadline.
