this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2024
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The 39th president, who entered hospice care in February 2023, submitted an absentee ballot, according to a grandson. His family said he had been eager to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.

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[–] vrek@programming.dev 10 points 1 month ago (6 children)

This is out of curiosity but if someone casts a absentee ballot and then dies before the vote is counted, does it still count?

On one hand I see "dead people shouldn't vote" but on the other "he voted when he was alive and it was only counted when he was dead"?

I know this situation doesn't normally come up but is there legal precedence?

To be clear I respect and Carter and hope he is still alive for quite some time but him being in hospice and voting brought the question to mind.

[–] silence7 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

There's a detailed article about that — Georgia doesn't have a law requiring that the ballot be counted, so there may be some level of discretion for election officials to toss it.

[–] AnarchistArtificer 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

A sentence from that article that I love:

"Ten [states] specifically mandate the counting of absentee ballots regardless of the voter’s corporeal status."

"Corporeal status". I love it. I'm probably going to semi-ironically incorporate that phrase into my lexicon

[–] leftytighty 2 points 1 month ago

If a person is alive at the time of voting, it makes sense to me to count it. They might die after the election before inauguration too.

Plus removing recently deceased people's already cast votes opens up creative violent ways to help your team which I'm not a fan of either

[–] Etterra@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Regardless, if that were to be the case for Jimmy Carter I think anyone who threw out his ballot would find themselves extremely unpopular.

[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Seriously. I have family in Georgia, and while there's a ton of right wingers down there, they're still proud of their Christian native raised former president. They'll forgive him for being a Democrat, he didn't know any better.

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