It's truly amazing that there aren't set deadlines for these things, subject, of course, to reasonable situational issues, such as we are currently facing.
There are deadlines. According to 3 U.S.C. § 5, states are required to complete any dispute-resolution procedures by the sixth day before the Electoral College is to vote. Not all those procedures are people trying to steal elections. For example, lots of places require a recount if the margin of victory is too small. That's something that would have to be completed by the deadline. But this year it will certainly apply to all the festivities that will likely arise.
...someone said that my vote is no longer legal, and won't be counted. Um, no. And that doesn't even get into the issues Jay and others raised about polling and drop-off locations, changes to ID requirements, etc.
Yeah, that's really the meat of it. Yes, it's a bit more chaotic than usual this time around. But the real problem is the disqualification of a vote that was cast presumptively legally. It should be extremely difficult to create a situation in which a vote is deemed ineffectual after the fact, and for there to be no remedy such as a new election that restores disenfranchised voters their right to cast a lawful vote. Yet we see a mad dash to the courts waving a number of legal theories. We've had challenges before the fact that affect various local governments' readiness to conduct polling. We have challenges during ongoing voting that might end up discarding ballots cast in good faith. I can't wait to see the nonsense that starts tomorrow.
Almost all of this is intended not to ensure election integrity, but to suppress the vote. Republicans presume the easier it is to vote, the more people will vote who oppose their policy and leadership. None of the measures they've proposed has any evidence to support the claim that it reduces election fraud. It simply places more barriers in the way.
...it's the responsibility of the current administration to ensure that the voting process is valid, to protect it from interference and fraud.
It's not quite as straightforward as that. Since the federal government has no power to regulate a State's method of choosing electors, it has no
additional duty to sustain whatever infrastructure a State, by its own discretion, has allowed as part of that process. The U.S. government has a responsibility to ensure a certain acceptable level of operation of the U.S. Postal Service for many reasons. But it's not responsible for others' discretionary use of it. We don't send cash through ordinary mail because it's understood the service is not reliable enough to guarantee delivery. And some States don't yet consider it reliable enough to use it exclusively for voting, along with the other uncertainties that can arise when voting is not in person. That others have greater faith can certainly factor into the reasoning in U.S.P.S applies when designing and operating the service. But ultimately the buck stops at the States in deciding how to handle ballots.
There really isn't much of a Gotcha here. The federal government can certainly do much to
hamper election integrity -- especially by undermining the mail. Those are criminally actionable offenses, if overt enough. But it has little responsibility to ensure or guarantee something that is the States' duty to do. In this case President Trump can "credibly" whine about the States allegedly falling short in stopping fraud and therefore being unfair to his election chances. Credible only in the sense that it correctly outlines the responsibilities; not credible in the sense that any facts support those claims.
I'll echo Jason's thoughts and add that it's also surprising that there are no national regulations on voting procedures, dates, times, using postal ballots or voter registration. It seems to be different from state to state (possibly even for counties?) with some very strange decisions being made on these. Surely these should have been made consistent across the country years ago.
In a word, federalism.
We do have a body called the Federal Election Commission, but they look only at how campaigns are financed. And they're presently impotent because they currently lack a quorum and cannot therefore sit.
But back to the question, it doesn't just seem like each State is different, it's expressly the case. The federal government has no power under the Constitution to govern how elections are run in each State. Originally the States were expected to have much more sovereignty for themselves, and the Union kept its hands off. The badly-worded passage in Article IV of the Constitution basically says only that some form of "republican" government is required of a State.
We have a National Electrical Code and all sorts of other standardized federal regulations, so why can't we have a national electoral code? Because the regulation of interstate commerce doesn't cover that. The only things that are exported from the state following an election are the successful candidates. That each state is allowed to set its own rules is simply part of the federalist nature of the United States. You can certainly argue that it's becoming more of a bug than a feature.
There may be a strength here. State laws vary, of course. But what's universal is the extremely low rate of voter fraud in all States. Any argument that challenges a particular practice in one State cannot rely on facial arguments. In some hypothetical State that has newly expanded voting by mail, it will be hard to argue, "That State's vote must be dismissed because voting by mail is unreliable." Here in Utah, and in a few other States, we've voted almost exclusively by mail for years, with only a tiny handful of instances of attempted fraud. It's annoying to have so many different ways of doing it. But so far, it has been very difficult to exploit
any of the systems in ways that Republicans will likely argue compromise the results.
How does one monitor for cheating at the polling place?
"That guy looks like an illegal immigrant! He can't vote! Shenanigans!" - a Trump supporter
Pretty much. Normally "poll monitoring" means assuring that the poll workers are properly carrying out their duties such as checking IDs, verifying signatures, preserving the integrity of the cast ballots, handling irregularities properly. What's really happening is that the Trump "poll monitors" would probably be breaking those laws, not enforcing them. Ordinary American citizens have very little authority to oversee election operations. In contrast, many state laws require onlookers to keep their distance. Impersonating an election official or a law enforcement officer is a crime, so it's not very likely that poll mobs will try that.
They might try stopping people before they enter the polling place and ask them for IDs or something. Of course no one is obligated to provide it, but that won't stop the boldest of the mob. What's really happening is just subtle intimidation. I imagine a bunch of overweight, heavily-armed guys wearing camo or "Trump Poll Watcher" T-shirts trying to look as official and imposing as they can, staying just outside the minimum distance, shouting slogans and generally getting all up in people's faces. That's all you need. If you have to run the gauntlet, you may decide not to. Doubly so for minorities, even if they're perfectly legitimate citizens. Yes, voter intimidation is illegal. Do you really think there will be consequences this time?
