Nevada Supreme Court Rules That Ballots Arriving After Election Day and Without a Postmark Are Legal

By streiff | 5:55 PM on October 28, 2024

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The Nevada Supreme Court has dismissed a GOP challenge to how mail-in ballots are counted. A majority of the court ruled that a mail-in ballot without a postmark must be counted so long as it arrives no later than three days after election day.

If a voter properly and timely casts their vote by mailing their ballot before or on the day of the election, and through a post office omission the ballot is not postmarked, it would go against public policy to discount that properly cast vote.
Indeed, there is no principled distinction between mail ballots where the postmark is ‘illegible’ or ‘smudged’ and those with no postmark — in each instance, the date the mail ballot was received by the post office cannot be determine.

Nevada is an important swing state where there is a heavy volume of mail-in ballots. It is also a state that is on the cusp of swinging to Donald Trump.

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State law already permits ballots that arrive with an unreadable postmark within a three-day grace period to be counted. This new ruling has opened the door to ballots that were not even mailed to be accepted as legal votes. While it is possible to understand a ballot arriving with an unreadable postmark, it is unfathomable that a ballot could arrive late with no postmark at all.

This ruling, which is based solely on state law, runs counter to a decision by the Fifth Circuit, which ruled that all ballots have to arrive by election day and state law cannot preempt the Constitution in that regard; see Fifth Circuit Issues 'Massive' Election Integrity Win on Ballot Receipt Deadline. Unfortunately, that decision only applies to the states in the Fifth Circuit: Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

By removing the necessity for any proof that a ballot has passed through the postal service and thereby negating a critical ballot security measure, the Nevada Supreme Court has opened wide the doors to rampant ballot fraud.