Thursday, August 06, 2020

Supreme Court makes mail voting difficult
The Tennessee Supreme Court has overturned the option for all eligible voters to vote by mail in November due to COVID-19. State election officials had opposed a lower court order that made it easier to vote. The high court's decision means Tennessee's excuse-based system will remain in effect for the November election. "This ruling does not go far enough," Justice Sharon Lee wrote in opposing the majority decision. "All qualified Tennessee voters — like voters in forty-five other states — should be allowed to apply to vote by absentee mail ballot during the unprecedented and deadly COVID-19 pandemic that is gripping our community, state, nation, and world." The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the Campaign Legal Center have filed a similar federal lawsuit that also challenges three other restrictions on absentee voting. One bars first-time voters from voting by mail unless they show ID at a local election office beforehand. Only a few states are not offering by-mail voting for everyone during the pandemic, and two-thirds of states allowed the practice before the pandemic.


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Thursday, April 29, 2021

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