Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America

by Stacey Abrams

For absentee ballots, all states should be required to offer them without excuse to anyone who seeks to vote from home. The process for receiving the ballot should have federal guidelines to ensure that voters actually get what they ask for, and reasons for rejection, such as signature matches, should be federally prohibited. Moreover, returning the completed ballot should have uniform deadlines, as with filing taxes with the IRS: postmark deadlines that voters can control versus delivery deadlines they cannot. Waiting for absentee ballots may delay the call of a contest on election night, but that’s not a good enough reason to restrict access to the vote. Americans may have grown used to instant results by 11:00 p.m., but we can learn to wait if a slight delay increases the legitimacy of the outcome. Though well-intentioned, provisional ballots have become a hindrance for certain communities, but again, standards for how provisional ballots are allocated and how they apply can mitigate many of the rejections. More important, by solving the challenges of voter registration, identification, and methods of voting, these improvements sharply reduce the number of ballots that fall outside the normal processes. A uniform federal ballot would even address the complexity of voting across the board.