- How they get there is up for debate, as competing bills have been offered in the House and Senate. The Senate bill took two attempts before passing on the floor.
Lawmakers in both chambers would like to see the process of placing an absentee ballot in an envelope changed in favor of simply casting a completed absentee ballot into a secure voting machine as is done on Election Day. However, there are competing bills on how to make that happen.
Last week, the Senate initially voted 24 to 25 against SB 2587. The bill would remove the envelope requirement, but it also seeks to reduce the number of days allowed to cast an absentee ballot from 45 days to 22 days.
The Senate measure would also add three additional excuses to the list of allowable reasons to cast an absentee ballot, those being for persons temporarily outside their county of residence, having to work or be on-call on Election Day, and being an emergency responder deployed by the President or the Governor.
After the failed vote, the bill was held on a motion to reconsider. The next day, Senate Election Committee chairman State Senator Jeremy England (R), the author of the bill, asked the chamber to reconsider the vote, saying he would continue to work with the body on the issue as it moves through the process.
Before the vote to reconsider was taken, State Senator Jeff Tate (R), who had spoken against the measure the prior day, attempted to offer an amendment that would essentially mirror a related House bill that passed 119 to 1 just days earlier.
That House bill – HB 859 – required absentee ballots to be placed in a voting machine when they were cast, doing away with the envelope, but did not change the number of days or add new excuses to the reasons persons are allowed to vote absentee.
After wrangling over the drafting of the amendment, Tate withdrew it, leaving England to ask the Senate to move the bill forward in the process.
Senators then voted 39 to 13 to reconsider SB 2587 and send it on to the House for consideration. It was transmitted to the House and referred to the Apportionment and Elections Committee this week.
As for HB 859, authored by House Apportionment and Elections chairman State Rep. Noah Sanford (R), it has been double referred in the Senate, with the measure now awaiting action by the Senate Elections and Senate Accountability, Efficiency, Transparency Committee.
The bills are likely headed to conference.
