The Vote And Voting Problems, Pre-Election Day 2020

Another day, another late-night court ruling. Just now, the Texas Supreme Court ruled in favor of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order that counties may have only one ballot drop site each — reversing a lower court ruling that had said counties could set up multiple drop sites. Voting-rights advocates had been pushing for more drop sites in large counties like Harris and Travis, which are home to millions of people (many of them Democrats).

As Maya mentioned earlier, a big concern this year is that a large number of mail ballots will be thrown out because of issues with voters’ signatures. However, a federal judge is now preventing South Carolina from discounting any ballots solely because of perceived signature mismatches. State officials in Pennsylvania had also previously told counties that they could not throw out any ballots because of mismatched signatures.

Important to remember: