On Vote-By-Mail and Untimely Death
If you vote by mail, but die before Election Day, does your vote count? It depends on where you lived.
Oregon counts ballots no matter what happens to the voter. So does Florida. But in South Dakota, if you die before the election, so does your vote.
Increasingly popular mail-in ballots mean voters can now choose candidates up to 60 days before an election, raising new questions about an age-old phenomenon normally associated with chicanery in places like Chicago: What should be done with the ballots of the recently dead?
I don’t have any particular wisdom on this one. It’s pretty clear that if someone dies in a car accident on the way to the voting booth, their vote doesn’t count. So by pure, unemotional fairness, neither should the vote of someone who voted by mail and died the day before election day. But I certainly don’t want to be the one arguing for canceling the vote of a soldier who was killed in action the day before the election…
