<I would be ashamed to call myself a republican if Bush was so blatantly hypocritical.>
With all due respect HT, Bush representatives, and an awful lot of GOP folks on this thread are, have been harping about the rule of law ever since November 7, and praising Harris for enforcing FL election laws so strictly. As I am sure is true in every other state, the law of Florida requires every returned absentee ballot -- whether overseas or not -- to bear the voter's signature. If it is not on there, the ballot is considered illegal and it can't be counted. This is intended to prevent election fraud, another major concern repeatedly discussed on this thread.
leg.state.fl.us
In addition, regulations of Secretary of State Harris require that overseas ballots be postmarked by election day; again, that is true not just of military voters, but all overseas voters. Nonetheless, if there were a way of clearly demonstrating that overseas absentees missing postmarks were in fact placed in the mail by election day, the GOP might well convince a court to count those. I imagine they are looking at the possibility right now. At this point, the ballots have just been challenged. As we all know now, a court could always overrule the local election official, and those ballots could still be counted. This would require, however, a court to look past the strict rule of law, as adopted by Secretary Harris.
If you want to check out the Secretary of State Regs on overseas ballots and other election matters, they are available at:
election.dos.state.fl.us |
