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If the poster was right about not counting absentees, it would make sense. You have an election and the election day votes give X for Bush and Y for Kerry. If there are fewer than |X-Y| votes, then they won't matter anyway. It makes sense to save money. It costs a lot to count those ballots statewide. This allows them to count absentees for races that count.

So, absentee ballots from registered disabled people are not counted. Is that what you are saying? I believe this is a form of discrimination.

I will await to hear from my Maine Representative. I pray you three are wrong. Because this would BE wrong!

P.S. If they did not count the absentee ballots, why would they even send them out? It costs a lot of money to make up these ballots and send them out. So what is the difference in the cost?

And what about registered bed-ridden voters? Are you saying that THEY cannot vote????

Let us say that there are 100 absentee ballots cast in your district. But the election-day margin of victory for each race is 200 or more. They won't bother counting the absentee ballots. But if there is one race in which the margin of victory is 99 on election day, they will pull out the absentee ballots and count the votes for that race.

It could be that Maine opens the ballots all the time, even when it couldn't possibly matter.

Do you understand that we are only talking about the case where the margin of victory is larger than the total number of absentee ballots?

I don't mean to argue with you because you say you are semi-disabled. BTW, so am I. But I will not use an absentee vote for the reasons I expressed to you above.

In every precinct there has to be a way to get a wheelchair person to the balloting booth. I've done it many times. I'm a registered Republican so a registered Democrat has to be with me in such cases.

You might get a kick or not about this, but one time in CA on voting day, the supervisors of my district failed to notify the HOA to unlock the gates to the polls. I had all the goodies, i.e., the votes and everything that goes along with that.

I went back home, got my Radio Flyer wagon, parked near the hill that was locked. Packed everything in the Radio Flyer. It was full to the top. Early voters helped me get down that hill. My three people who were supposed to help me were on time, but too late to get the stuff down the hill. And they had to walk down the hill which was about a half mile. I set partially up, swore in three voters to help me until my people got there. My people got there 15 minutes late. I then released the other sworn officials. Then swore in the regular ones.

BTW, the polling place was opened on time because I cared. The sheriffs came over and broke the heavy metal gate that kept the voters out.

The HOA had to pay for that gate.

I believe most state laws read such that they can certify the election if the total outstanding ballots are less than the margin already obtained by the leader. In that case, the votes of the outstanding ballots would not have any impact. Of course they have to process them since there are many races/issues on the ballot.

If they did not count the absentee ballots, why would they even send them out?

As far as I understand what I've been reading, those votes will be counted if the "hard number" of them equals enough to make a difference in the outcome. If Bush has a lead of 1 million votes over Kerry in Ohio (one can hope, can't they?) and there are only 600,000 absentee ballots total, what difference would it make to count them? This is all that we are talking about here. No one is being disenfranchised (unlike Florida, where the race was much closer and the ballots should have been counted).