Absentee ballots from service members are still arriving in crucial battleground states, leaving open a race that days from now could still hang in the balance.
While President Trump has insisted that mail-in ballots should not be counted after Election Day, they may provide his last hope in a vote count that is rapidly moving in his opponent’s favor.
His campaign has launched a slew of legal challenges in key states, is waging a fight against “clubhouse governors,” and is crowdsourcing citizen complaints of fraud or abuse that it believes could tilt the election in the president’s favor.
Friday is the final day by which Georgia may process absentee and mail-in ballots, but other key states with close races will have through 5 p.m. on Nov. 12, at the latest.
Georgia had 8,307 service members and family members stationed overseas and registered to vote in 2018, voters who in 2016 cast 5,203 votes, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
In Fulton County, Georgia, which contains Atlanta, an official said Thursday that all absentee mail ballots had been counted, with only provisional ballots and an “undetermined” number of military ballots remaining, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
“If the race comes down to the wire, those ballots could make a difference,” said Jack Noland, research manager at Count Every Hero, a group calling for all military ballots to be counted.
In North Carolina, where military ballots can arrive until Nov. 12, 4,200 outstanding ballots remained as of Nov. 4. The counting and auditing process will take 10 days, the North Carolina State Board of Elections said.
“The margins there are close: that chunk of ballots is worth about 6% of the margin separating Trump and Biden at the moment,” Noland said in an email.
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said this week that the state would continue to accept military absentee ballots through Nov. 10.
“We want to remind everyone, military and overseas ballots are not due until a week after Election Day,” Boockvar said. “We want to make sure that not only every civilian absentee mail-in valid voter is counted, but also that every man and woman, who are serving our country, that their votes are counted.”
More than 340,000 mail-in ballots remained to be counted by late afternoon Thursday.
In 2016, close to 8,400 military absentee ballots were returned and counted in Pennsylvania. In North Carolina, 6,317 ballots were returned and counted, and in Wisconsin, 2,690 ballots were returned and counted, data from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission showed.
Nevada will count ballots arriving by Nov. 10. Service members and their families stationed away from home cast 2,677 votes in 2016.
“We won’t know the exact number of ballots outstanding, but past elections show the importance of counting these votes,” Noland said.
In Wisconsin, Michigan, and Arizona, ballots from service members overseas must be received by Election Day, and so outstanding ballots “won’t swing those races,” Noland said.
An August poll of service members published by the Military Times showed support for Trump eclipsed by Joe Biden.
Among the sample of 1,018 active-duty troops, 41% said they planned to vote for Biden, while 37% said they would vote for Trump. Twenty-two percent said they favored either a third-party candidate or did not plan on voting.
