The court sided with Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap’s office in rejecting a push to extend the deadline to count absentee ballots that arrive late.
Maine’s highest court on Friday reaffirmed that absentee ballots must be received by Election Day to be counted. In a 4-1 decision, justices on the Maine Supreme Judicial Court rejected a lawsuit seeking to require state election officials to count any ballots that were postmarked by Election Day but do not arrive before polls close. The lawsuit from the Alliance for Retired Americans, Vote.org and two Maine residents had sought to extend the cutoff by 10 days because of the unprecedented use of absentee ballots this year and concerns about delayed mail delivery. The plaintiffs had also to require municipal clerks to take additional steps to contact voters whose ballots were deemed invalid. But the justices agreed with a lower court that the absentee ballot deadline imposed by the Maine Legislature “even in 2020 imposes only a modest burden on the right to vote.
