The Vote And Voting Problems, Pre-Election Day 2020

On Wednesday, Iowa’s state Supreme Court upheld a Republican-backed law that prevents county elections commissioners from filling in missing information on absentee ballot request forms using voter registration data. Instead, commissioners must contact voters to fix the forms themselves. It’s the latest Republican victory in the state after a previous ruling invalidated tens of thousands of ballot request forms that had been sent to voters with their information already filled in, deciding that those applications should have been sent to voters blank.

A.S. from New Jersey: Have you considered factors such as rejected absentee ballots (which would affect Democrats more because they’re more likely to use those) in your probability estimations?

No, our model doesn’t attempt to account for anything that happens after ballots are cast, such as mail ballots being rejected or Trump successfully challenging the outcome of the election. We’re not trying to dismiss these concerns; they’re just outside the scope of a statistical analysis. Things like human error or the whims of the president can’t be modeled!

If you’re interested in reading more about rejected ballots, I humbly recommend this article I wrote last week. It’s certainly concerning for democracy that hundreds of thousands of otherwise eligible voters will probably see their ballots invalidated this year; however, I would be surprised if it actually affected the outcome of the election. First of all, only 30-40 percent of ballots are expected to be cast by mail this year. Second, only about 1 percent of mail ballots are rejected. That means an election would have to be within 0.3 or 0.4 percentage points for rejected mail ballots to be decisive. And even in that case, it’s not as if all mail ballots are cast for Democrats. So even a Democratic lead of 0.3 or 0.4 points probably wouldn’t be erased (just narrowed) by rejected mail ballots.

Of course, this is a very rough, hypothetical example. In some states there will be a lot more than 30 percent of votes cast by mail. Furthermore, the rejection rate could be higher this year because so many people are voting by mail for the first time and are unfamiliar with the rules (although experts are optimistic that this will be mitigated by states extending their ballot-receipt deadlines, allowing voters to fix mistakes on their ballot and making ballot instructions clearer). So we can’t totally rule out rejected ballots being decisive in a hyper-close race. I just think it’s unlikely.

Another election-related order came down from the Supreme Court on Wednesday evening. By a 5-3 vote, with conservatives in the majority and liberals dissenting, the court blocked a district court judge’s ruling that kept Alabama state officials from preventing counties in the state from providing curbside voting, a measure designed specifically to help voters with disabilities or those at risk of catching COVID-19 who were uncomfortable waiting with other voters in an indoor space. A few counties had wanted to implement the measure, which would allow people to vote from their cars or hand their ballot to a poll worker at curbside. The district court’s order would have permitted (but not required) counties to provide the service over the objections of the state.

The Supreme Court didn’t explain its reasoning in siding with Alabama state officials. But the liberal justices did sign onto a dissent authored by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. She wrote that the court didn’t have a good reason to stand in the way of counties trying to make voting easier for elderly or disabled people. “If those vulnerable voters wish to vote in person, they must wait inside, for as long as it takes, in a crowd of fellow voters whom Alabama does not require to wear face coverings,” she wrote. “The District Court’s modest injunction is a reasonable accommodation, given the short time before the election.”