Judge rules against Navajo Nation voter lawsuit to force Arizona to count late-arriving mail-in ball

[RandySF]

A federal judge on Friday denied a request by several voters to require that election officials count mail ballots received from the Navajo Nation after 7 p.m. on Election Day, as long as the ballots are postmarked before that deadline.

The voters argued that slow mail service and long distances between drop-off locations mean their votes may not be counted even if they send in ballots several days before Election Day.

But Judge G. Murray Snow wrote that they did not provide any evidence that ballots from Navajo voters were disproportionately tossed out because of the deadline.

Snow also wrote that the evidence in the case did not show that issues like slow mail service disproportionately impact Navajo voters instead or rural voters more broadly.

The lawsuit "certainly shows that meeting the receipt deadline is more inconvenient for Navajo voters than it is for certain voters" but did not show they face a disparate burden, Snow wrote.

Ultimately, Snow concluded, the lawsuit is unlikely to succeed on any of its claims, and he denied the group an injunction.



https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/09/25/judge-rejects-navajo-nation-voter-lawsuit-force-arizona-count-mail-in-ballots-arriving-late/3538694001/

[Laelth]

1. Not the result I would want, but the Judge's reasoning seems sound. n/t

-Laelth

[Tom Rinaldo]

2. Is there anything in Arizona Law making it illegal for volunteers to drive stamped envelopes

on a daily basis to the appropriate major mail sorting facility for faster processing? They could be collected from many households and driven off the reservation by a team of volunteers if that doesn't violate any election laws. It doesn't have to be advertised exclusively as a ballot delivery service. I bet volunteers to do this could be recruited.