It’s now August 4.

The New York City primary happened on June 23.

But they were still trying to determine the status of thousands of mail-in ballots.

CNN reports that a NY primary is still undecided over 4 weeks after election night with ballots being lost, found, tossed out, etc.

While of course, completely ridiculing people’s concerns about mail-in voting.

Yea okay. pic.twitter.com/i0aiQG8JoI

— Vince Dao (@thevincedao) July 31, 2020

“Nearly six weeks later, two congressional races remain undecided, and officials are trading blame over the mishandling of tens of thousands of mail-in ballots,” according to the New York Times.

Welcome to the mania of mail-in ballots. Imagine if there were mail-in voting across the country and what a nightmare that would be.

But it gets worse.

Now, a federal judge has ordered the state to count thousands of mail-in ballots which had been judged invalid for not having a postmark or coming in after June 23 in a suit brought by congressional candidate Suraj Patel and Brooklyn Assembly candidate Emily Gallagher.

From NY Post:

A major problem: Thousands of ballots that had stamps pre-paid by New York State were not post-marked by the Postal Service, particularly those coming from Brooklyn voters. But most other ballots were post-marked.

If such a post-marked ballot was not received by election officials by June 23, it was not counted.

Many ballots arrived at the elections board a day or two after the primary election because voters did not receive them in the mail from the Postal Service until Election Day.

What a mess.

But the judge is basically saying because of the problems, all ballots without a postmark must be counted as long as it doesn’t show a postmark later than June 23.

As former Bush official Ari Fleischer accurately observes, if postmarks don’t matter, anyone could just “ballot harvest” and turn them in later.

Postmarks must matter. If the Judge allows ballots w/o postmarks to be counted, it will open the gates of corruption. If ballots w/o postmarks count, what stops a rogue postal employee from sending non-postmark ballots the morning after a close election? https://t.co/G2frWrHrfv

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) August 1, 2020

This is a recipe for disaster. It just vastly increases the possibility of being disenfranchised if this were done on a massive scale. It’s one thing if there are a few requested absentee ballots. It’s another whole thing again if ballots are just sent to anyone who is registered. You have the problem of people being dead, moved, incapacitated, and or the possibility of someone voting in their place. Then you have the question does the voter get it in time, a problem in New York. Then does it make it there in time to count. And those are just a few of the problems.