As early voting is under way across the country, issues are popping up in several states. Here are some snapshots from various news sources around the country on Friday:
Arizona: In Maricopa County, home of Phoenix, about 20 ballots were burned when someone set fire to a mailbox.
Pennsylvania: In Lancaster County, election workers flagged 2,500 voter registrations dropped off Monday in Lancaster County for suspected fraud. Many of them had the same handwriting.
Virginia: A federal judge is ordering Virginia to return the names of more than 1,500 “noncitizens” to voter rolls following a lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice saying the commonwealth violated the National Voter Registration Act.
The Justice Department said the commonwealth unlawfully removed individuals deemed “noncitizens” from voter rolls within 90 days before an election, citing a “quiet period” in the National Voter Registration Act that mandates “no such voter cancelation or list maintenance programs may be conducted” within that time period.
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares is blasting the ruling, calling the move a “politically motivated stunt.”
Mississippi: The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against a Mississippi law that allows ballots that are postmarked Nov. 5 to be counted if they arrive up to days later.
The ruling covers Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, but the issue has been remanded to a lower court for further deliberation and will likely get appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Georgia: Nearly 2.5 million ballots have been received in early voting. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said early voting this year is “shattering turnout records.” Thus far, 35% of all the state’s registered voters have cast their ballots.
Maine: Nearly 165,000 voters have already returned their ballots. Maine has 948,734 registered voters; thus one out of four have cast a ballot already, either by mail, in drop-boxes, or through in-person voting. Maine has ranked-choice voting.
California: More than two million California voters have already voted early, according to Political Data Inc. That is about 11% of California voters have returned their ballots.
