U.S. citizens who live overseas and have never resided in Michigan and North Carolina can cast ballots in those states by mail, provided they meet certain requirements, according to separate rulings handed down on Oct. 21.
Citizens can vote in those states even if they’ve never lived there provided they have parents who resided in one of the states before going overseas, according to the rulings. A citizen whose spouse lived in Michigan before leaving the country can also cast ballots, one judge said.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) and other Republicans had challenged voting rules in the swing states, arguing that ballots from overseas voters who have never lived in the states should not be counted.
The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act mandates that states accept ballots from Americans who live outside the country, but that requirement does not extend to citizens who have never lived in one of the states, Republicans said in filings earlier this year.
In Michigan, the secretary of state years ago issued rules that said spouses and children of overseas voters can receive ballots themselves if they’re U.S. citizens of voting age.
Even if the Republican challenge had merit, Patel said she would deny it because it comes too close to the November election and could result in people who already cast ballots being deemed ineligible. The language has been in place since at least 2017.
Republicans had pointed to the Michigan Constitution, which states that citizens of the United States who are at least 21 years of age and who have resided in Michigan for six months shall be qualified to vote. Patel responded that a similar residency requirement was found unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1972 decision Dunn v. Blumstein.
“This court has weighed the hypothetical possibility of harm to plaintiffs against the rights of the defendants and finds that on balance the equitable discretion of this court should not be invoked to treat an entire group of citizens differently based upon unsupported and speculative allegations for which there is not even scintilla of substantive evidence,” he wrote.
The RNC and other Republicans had asked the court to force election officials to set aside ballots from individuals who attested to having never lived in the United States and not count them unless the individuals provided proof of residency in North Carolina.
“Defendants have allowed and will continue to allow Never Residents to register and participate in North Carolina elections despite a constitutional prohibition against such participation or, at a minimum, without requiring such persons to produce identification documents otherwise required by state law,” they said in a motion for relief.
Spokespersons for the North Carolina Board of Elections, the RNC, and the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which had intervened in the cases to back state officials, did not return requests for comment.
