For some time now, I have been worried about Republican driven court cases to get mail-in votes rejected if they are received after Election Day.
Looking at the Project Election website, with five full (Today, Friday, Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday) mailing days to go until election polls close on Tuesday night, it seems the Republicans might change their minds about this.
First of all, several of the “battleground” states have already returned a significant amount of their mail-in ballots.
Pennsylvania is at 68% overall, over 73% for Democrats
Michigan is at 77.2% (no data by party)
Wisconsin is at 81.7% (no data by party)
Florida is at 70.4% (Democrats at 72.6%)
Arizona is at 63% (Democrats at 70.4)
North Carolina is a 58.7% (Democrats are at 59.4%)
Georgia is a 62.6% (no party data)
I think it is probably safe to assume that many more ballots will be received by next Tuesday evening.
Also, many people are dropping off their mail-in ballots in drop boxes (which is the recommended path at this late date), and these are typically not being processed as quickly as those received in the mail.
Taking all of this into account, I think that several of these states will have over 90% return rate by then. So, the number of votes outstanding on Election Day in these places is going to be relatively low this year (I mean there will be a small percentage of people who don’t turn in their ballots at all)
Second, in places where the registrations are known, Democrats have been better about turning their ballots in early and lead in both raw number and percentage of mail-in ballots returned. They are nervous about this like me.
Even in states like NV and CA, where the return rate is lower (Nevada is at 25%, CA is at 38.7%), Democrats have a significant lead (33% NV, 45% CA) over Republicans (20% NV 35% CA)
Putting this together suggests to me that Republicans could actually be hurting themselves in this fight by trying to toss votes received after Election Day—as it seems they will be more likely to benefit from those ballots being counted.
One last worry is that both PA and WI will not start counting or even processing the mail-in votes until Election Day. I have read that several counties in PA have a plan to get that done on Election Day.
So, what I am thinking is that the Republicans are gearing up to have this fight, probably already hiring lawyers and such, but at the end of the evening of Election Night, many of these states, such as Florida, are going to look light blue and Republicans are going to suddenly find themselves caring about every vote being counted.
Just my two cents
(data from US Elections Project)