There is a line for the date next to the signature. It’s supposed to be the date it was signed. Some people mistakenly put their birthdate. Some people use the European format. Some people leave it blank. And then sometimes people just fuck up for no particular reason and put the wrong month or year.
None of these errors should invalidate their vote.
We do as a collective states/country try to make voting hard to do, while declaring it as one of the fundamental rights and duties of citizens. Some things should invalidate a vote, others seem there as hoops to jump through to restrict them while not being obviously relevant to legitimacy. Even going back to the shitshow of 2000 with hanging chads and how ridiculous some of the “experts” would carry things to argue the “intent” of a voter.
It does seem pretty safe to assume that the ballot was signed sometime between the time it was printed and the date it was postmarked which, given the fast-paced and tumultuous nature of American politics, surely cannot be that wide of a window. And if the purpose is to somehow catch people submitting ballots after the cutoff date, surely one would expect a wouldbe election fraudster to lose no sleep in also falsifying an earlier date, making one wonder why this information is all that pertinent to begin with.
Now, a more cynical person might assume that this was just another one of those little traps specifically engineered to attract common mistakes (knowing full well that some of us are still putting the year down as “2015” because goddammit, what the hell time is it?) which can then be selectively enforced depending on whether or not you want to invalidate a large swath of votes. But I mean, surely our very trustworthy elected officials would never do such a thing…
There is a line for the date next to the signature. It’s supposed to be the date it was signed. Some people mistakenly put their birthdate. Some people use the European format. Some people leave it blank. And then sometimes people just fuck up for no particular reason and put the wrong month or year.
None of these errors should invalidate their vote.
We do as a collective states/country try to make voting hard to do, while declaring it as one of the fundamental rights and duties of citizens. Some things should invalidate a vote, others seem there as hoops to jump through to restrict them while not being obviously relevant to legitimacy. Even going back to the shitshow of 2000 with hanging chads and how ridiculous some of the “experts” would carry things to argue the “intent” of a voter.
It does seem pretty safe to assume that the ballot was signed sometime between the time it was printed and the date it was postmarked which, given the fast-paced and tumultuous nature of American politics, surely cannot be that wide of a window. And if the purpose is to somehow catch people submitting ballots after the cutoff date, surely one would expect a wouldbe election fraudster to lose no sleep in also falsifying an earlier date, making one wonder why this information is all that pertinent to begin with.
Now, a more cynical person might assume that this was just another one of those little traps specifically engineered to attract common mistakes (knowing full well that some of us are still putting the year down as “2015” because goddammit, what the hell time is it?) which can then be selectively enforced depending on whether or not you want to invalidate a large swath of votes. But I mean, surely our very trustworthy elected officials would never do such a thing…
My PA ballot was pre-filled with 2024 as the year.
They need to be more specific in that area, I know it’s obvious, but some folks still misunderstand it. Put “today’s date” instead of just “date”.