In Massachusetts, there appears to be confusion of over whether overseas and military voters should be expecting their ballots in the mail. An article entitled “Secretary of State Galvin, Scott Brown campaign spar over absentee ballot deadline” lays out the issue. The Scott Brown campaign apparently received reports from local officials that ballots had not been mailed out by the due date required by federal law. From the article, the response by the Secretary of State (at least according to this article) was not exactly clear:
Federal law states that absentee ballots must be mailed to citizens at
least 45 days before an election to ensure enough time for them to be
returned and for the votes to be tallied. And while William Galvin,
secretary of the commonwealth assures that they were delivered to the
351 town and city clerks on Saturday to adhere to the deadline, the
Brown campaign is asserting otherwise.…Galvin said. “We’ve worked very hard to make sure every community
received their absentee ballots on time and at this point, we are working
to make sure the various clerks offices are following through. We are
fully committed to making sure everyone gets their ballot no matter who
they will vote for. The objective of this letter seems to be to create
controversy or an issue where there isn’t one.”
From the above statement, it appears Massachusetts is simply satisfied with the fact that they sent the ballots to local election officials; however, the Brown campaign is asking the bigger and legitimate question – whether the ballots were actually mailed out by the due date or even at all. If not, there is a big problem.