2016 Election Night

The polls have closed in most of Indiana and Kentucky, although the polling stations in the Central time zone in those states are still open. Don’t expect a call from the networks in either state until 7 p.m., but we should start getting results from them sooner than that.

In 2014, the story of a young woman with fatal brain cancer began making the rounds online and on TV news shows. Twenty-nine-year-old Brittany Maynard knew she was dying, and she wanted to do so on her own terms, by taking prescribed medication if her pain became resistant to morphine and unbearable. This desire prompted her to move to Oregon, where, by the time she died on Nov. 1, 2014, she had become perhaps the most widely known user of Oregon’s Measure 16, called the Death with Dignity Act. Maynard’s activism brought new attention to right-to-die legislation, and her widower, Dan Diaz, has lent his support to Colorado Proposition 106, the End of Life Options Act, which would make Colorado the fifth state to permit some form of assisted suicide. Modeled on Oregon Measure 16, Proposition 106 would allow terminally ill patients (those with less than six months to live, as determined by two doctors) to take a lethal dose of medication. To receive the drugs, the person would be required to voluntarily request it three times — twice orally and once in writing — with witnesses present. The measure would also criminalize the coercion of patients. A September Rocky Mountain PBS and Colorado Mesa University showed that 70 percent of registered voters favored the measure. Advocates include Gov. John Hickenlooper and the Boulder and Denver Medical Societies. A February 2016 survey of members of the Colorado Medical Society, the largest physicians organization in Colorado, found that 56 percent of respondents supported “physician assisted suicide.” The Catholic Church and disability rights groups are among those rallying against the measure, and the Denver Post also has come out against it, over concerns that it could “entice insurers to drop expensive treatments for terminal patients.”

An update about what’s going on in Nevada right now, since it’s pretty convoluted, open to a certain amount of interpretation, and a lot of you seem to have questions about it. This afternoon, a judge denied the Trump campaign’s request that early-vote ballots be sequestered and that information on poll workers be given out, though the suit might well continue, according to elections experts I’ve talked to. From a macro view, the purpose of the Trump suit seems to be to lodge a complaint on the record about potential improprieties in heavily Latino Clark County in case the race is close in Nevada. To be clear, the facts on the ground do not, at this point in time, seem to suggest that there were any improprieties (see Jon Ralston’s reporting from the state if you’d like to know more.) One question this suit would have to grapple with if it ever reaches a point of action is: When did voters got in line to vote during early-voting hours? On Election Day itself, Nevada law is clear that you cannot vote if you’ve entered the line past the official closing time of a polling place. But the rules are foggier when it comes to early-voting days. If they got in after the time when polling places officially closed, that could indeed be problematic … or it might not matter. It depends on what legal expert you’re talking to. Over at Slate, Rick Hasen argues that since early voting locations are often at sites used for other purposes — like the Nevada grocery store polling site that’s in question in the Trump suit — the rules are more flexible, citing Nevada code: “The schedules for conducting voting are not required to be uniform among the temporary branch polling places.” This is basically the argument that Clark County lawyers made this afternoon. In an email, Professor Ned Foley, an elections expert at Ohio State University Law School, said he saw the validity of this argument, that voters should be allowed flexibility on early voting days, but offered the other side as well: “I also see the counterargument, that once a scheduled closing hour is set for each day of early voting, the government must stick with that closing hour, meaning that a voter who shows up late needs to come back the next day, or on Election Day itself if that’s the next day of voting. Some points in support of this counterargument are: rules are rules and needed to be followed, especially in elections, so that all political parties and voters know the rules in advance; thus once set, shouldn’t be changed. Also, letting late voters cast a ballot isn’t fair to voters who didn’t try to go after the scheduled closing hour; they didn’t know that the rule would be bent for some. Of course, for any voter who was already in line at the closing hour, there’s no dispute: they get to cast a ballot.” The law, jealous mistress that she is, offers no clear answers.