Free Republic

A woman approaches a drop box in the dark with what appears to be handfuls of ballots. At a different drop box, someone else is seen making multiple trips to insert ballots. At yet another, the same car stops on at least three separate occasions, with different people stepping out and heading to the box. It’s not a trailer for the latest conspiracy movie about rigged elections. Instead, the video footage has become central to a real-world controversy over potential fraud involving ballot drop boxes, a favorite target of right-wing conspiracy theorists since former President Donald Trump’s loss in the...

Thousands of US flags have been placed at the National Mall in honor of the nearly 200,000 Americans who were not able to be present for the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. The display, which is called the 'Field of Flags,' is comprised of 191,500 US flags and 56 pillars of light. Images taken on Monday showed the flags carefully placed in rows near the US Capitol. The flags are representative of the Americans who cannot travel to Washington, DC, to attend the inauguration in person due to the coronavirus pandemic.

RICHMOND, Va. – A federal judge has ruled that Virginia violated the voting rights of military service members and other Americans overseas when officials failed to mail more than 2,100 absentee ballots in time for last year's presidential election. U.S. District Judge Richard Williams also ordered Friday that the Virginia Board of Elections count and certify the absentee ballots. The ballots from military service members and others living outside the state were the focus of a lawsuit filed by Republican candidate John McCain's campaign, which alleged that they weren't mailed in time for overseas voters to return them before the...

Norfolk elections officials today reluctantly loosened their procedures for registering college students to vote after protests from presidential candidate Barack Obama’s campaign and an admonishment from state election officials

A federal judge in Toledo has ruled that Ohio voters who did not receive absentee ballots on time can cast provisional ballots at the polls. The decision by U-S District Court Judge David Katz reverses an earlier directive by Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell. Blackwell's directive had said the voters could not cast provisional ballots despite not receiving their absentee ones. Sarah White has sued elections officials today on behalf of Ohio voters who claim they did not receive their absentee ballots. She wanted permission for them to be able to cast provisional ballots at the polls. It was...

CLEVELAND — Thousands of people who are registered voters in Ohio and Florida possibly could vote twice in the presidential election through use of absentee ballots, The Plain Dealer reported Sunday. An investigation of voter rolls in the two key battleground states found that some double voting has occurred previously and could go undetected Tuesday, the newspaper said. Many states have only just begun to compile statewide voter registration lists to comply with a 2002 federal voting law. Such lists allow state officials to find double registrations within a state, but states rarely coordinate with one another. Virtually nothing prevents...

HARRISBURG - The state will count absentee ballots of Pennsylvanians living abroad and serving in the military overseas that arrive up to eight days after Tuesday's election under a compromise brokered yesterday by a federal judge. Yet the agreement might not be the final word on a contentious battle pitting Republican leaders and conservative talk-show hosts against Democratic Gov. Rendell, who had until yesterday opposed the extension. Hours after a federal judge approved the settlement, GOP leaders filed a separate motion in state court to push back the deadline even further. Still, parents of the two Army enlisted men serving...

DES MOINES, Sept. 26 - They're off and voting in Iowa, even before all the corn has been harvested. In the state's 20 most populous counties, which account for about 60 percent of the vote, more than 140,345 absentee ballots had been applied for as of last Wednesday, according to a survey of county auditors by The Des Moines Register. Under Iowa law, anyone can request an absentee ballot, no questions asked, and roughly three times as many Democrats as Republicans did so in the counties studied by The Register. Early voting began on Thursday, 40 days before Election Day....

MAKE SURE OUR TROOPS GET TO VOTE. With word of voter fraud being an issue in this election, we need to take an active stand. I just heard a worried father call the Sean Hannity radio show. He said his son is an overseas Marine and that the Marine has yet to recieve his absentee ballot. The father is worried, and he should be, that there is yet another effort to stop our military from voting. I THINK THAT COUNTIES MAIL OUT THOSE BALLOTS. Which means we should all be contacting County Elections offices in our own areas around the...

On November 19, 2000, we discovered that there are no limits to what Democrats will do to win an election. The same Democrats who so often and so loudly protest any real or imagined threat to a minority's right to vote had desperately worked to disenfranchise a minority group thought to be friendly to the other side. With the presidential election hanging by a loose chad in Palm Beach County, Florida, Dems launched their campaign to disenfranchise military absentee voters. The memo instructing Democratic election canvassers on the best means to do so — authored by lawyer Mark Herron —...

American expats have never felt so wanted — or so powerful. With the US presidential election less than six months away, both Republicans and Democrats are working hard to secure expat votes. This massive surge in activity is because many people believe expats could decide the election this year. Even former Vice President Dan Quayle thinks so. He reminded the German chapter of Republicans Abroad in April how much the absentee vote (the ballot papers coming in mainly from abroad) mattered in the pivotal state of Florida in 2000. "It was the absentee votes that turned the tide in Florida....

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana - In a state infamous for political chicanery it has become a well-worn joke: Even the dead can vote in Louisiana. The new punchline: Soon, it may even be legal — at least in a few rare cases. A Louisiana law in effect at least since 1921 says if a person casts an absentee ballot, then dies before election day, the vote doesn't count. State Sen. Reggie Dupre says that isn't fair. "If someone casts a ballot, whether at the polls or absentee, their vote should count," he said Thursday. After all, he added, if someone has...