These policy variations are known to cause controversy in recent elections, as they are seen as benefiting one political party over another.

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With a week to go until Election Day and more than 50 million votes already cast, questions linger about the ballot processing process and whether it will cause problems in close races. Below is everything voters need to know about it.

What is ballot healing?

Ballot repair is offered by many states, including the seven major battlegrounds for the 2024 elections, as a remedy for voters who submit defective ballots by mail.

Often, mail-in voting problems involve missing or mismatched signatures on the envelopes in which ballots are returned. Addressing these loopholes typically allows thousands more votes to count in elections.

To remedy a voter’s ballot, election officials notify the voter that they mailed a problematic ballot that will be rejected, and they offer the voter an opportunity to resolve the problem so that the ballot vote can be counted.

How do battleground states handle ballot processing?

Some states require mail-in ballots to be processed before Election Day, while others allow it within days of the election. Most policies to correct ballots focus on correcting signature errors.

In Georgia, election officials must notify voters that their absentee ballot was rejected, and voters have until three days after Election Day to make any necessary corrections. Michigan similarly gives voters the opportunity to remedy ballot deficiencies up to three days after the election.

Nevada law gives voters up to six days after the election to correct missing or inconsistent signatures.

In the case of extremely close races, which all of these states could see on Tuesday, that could cause delays in the vote counting process while election officials process ballots.

Wisconsin requires that mail-in ballots with missing voter signatures, missing witness signatures, or signatures that do not match those recorded be corrected by 8 p.m. on Election Day.

In Arizona, county officials are required to reject an absentee ballot if a signature is missing, but they must then, under state law, make “reasonable efforts to contact the voter, l ‘inform of the missing signature and allow the voter to add their signature no later than 7 p.m. on polling day.

Why is Pennsylvania getting so much attention for its election-fighting policies?

Pennsylvania, a must-win swing state in 2024, is unique in that it does not have a statewide standard for processing ballots and instead allows each of the 67 counties of the State to define its own policies.

County-level discrepancies can sometimes be confusing in a state where mail-in voting is widespread. More than 2 million people, out of 8 million registered voters, have requested an absentee ballot in Pennsylvania for the 2024 election.

David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, explained that the General Assembly expressly adopted this policy on a county-by-county basis and alluded to the headaches it has caused.

“This is something that the legislature allowed, even though, frankly, election officials and others have begged them to normalize this,” Becker said.

A analysis by a local media outlet, revealed that 37 counties, including the closely watched Bucks County and the populous, left-leaning Allegheny County, offer what are often described as various “notice and remedy” options allowing voters to correct their incorrect absentee ballots. .

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Some red counties, such as Lancaster, Washington and York counties, do not have notice-and-cure options.

This inequality has drawn scrutiny because of how it could benefit one political party over another.

Henry Olsen, an election analyst and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, noted that mail-in ballots “will be disproportionately Democratic in Pennsylvania,” a statistic that coincides with major Democratic strongholds, including areas of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, State. allowing some form of notification and healing process.

“There was a concern (in 2020) that heavily Democratic counties would dedicate a lot of resources to this, where every vote counts, finding someone … and healing was something that people were concerned about,” Olsen said. “Certainly, it’s odd that different counties are allowed to do different things in terms of the efforts they can put into trying to fix a ballot.”

Norm Eisen, a prominent left-wing legal analyst, said vote healing is not a “Democrat-Republican issue.”

“People make mistakes on their ballots, regardless of party,” Eisen said, adding that “if the election is close, that could swing the election one way or the other.”

What fight to cure Pennsylvania’s elections is underway before the Supreme Court?

A new legal fight has made its way to the Supreme Court, centering on “naked ballots” — ballots lacking a sealed inner envelope known as a “secrecy envelope.”

Some counties in Pennsylvania have a policy of informing voters before the election that the absentee ballot they submitted will not be counted because it is missing a secrecy envelope. One cure option available to voters is to show up at the polls on Election Day and fill out a provisional ballot to replace their defective absentee ballot.

The Republican National Committee argued to the high court that this violated state law, which prohibits voters who chose to mail in their ballots from filling out provisional ballots.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled last month against the RNC and in favor of Democrats, saying voters could actually correct their flawed mail-in ballots by filling out provisional ballots on Election Day. The RNC asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene and block this option.

Why did Republicans sue in North Carolina for voter fraud?

In North Carolina, a lawsuit related to ballot manipulation is underway play in federal court between the RNC and the state election board.

The RNC filed the lawsuit after the election board sent statewide guidance this year telling election officials that to streamline the healing process, they could count mail-in ballots using their own personal envelopes instead of special “container return” envelopes. Normally, these ballots would be rejected and election officials would offer the voter the opportunity to submit a new ballot.

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Like Pennsylvania, North Carolina was another hotbed of concern after the elections board considered allowing voters to remedy missing signatures in 2020 by submitting affidavits.

A study found that in the 2020 general election, nearly 20,000 votes in North Carolina were counted due to the healing process.