With less than two months to Nov. 3, officials planning to mail live ballots to every voter are running out of time to heed the lessons of the election dispute I survived two decades ago: States must treat every eligible vote the same. But state universal mail-in procedures and shifting ballot count deadlines jeopardize the equal right to vote. Universal mail-in voting risks both the dilution of legitimate votes and the disenfranchisement of eligible voters — equal protection problems eliminated by common-sense absentee voting procedures.
In Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court held “the equal dignity owed to each voter” precludes state laws that “value one person’s vote over that of another,” whether through the “dilution of the weight of a citizen’s vote” or “wholly prohibiting the free exercise of the franchise.” But “the absence of specific standards” meant Al Gore’s county-specific recounts in Florida in 2000 violated equal protection guarantees.
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