Senate panel advances bill to standardize absentee ballot handling and notification

Senator Tucker told the Senate committee that Senate Bill 217 is intended to "clean up the absentee ballot voting process" by making forms, terminology and counting procedures uniform across the state. He said the bill replaces the term "unofficial result" with "preliminary count" and keeps the statutory restriction that ballots cannot be counted before 8:30 a.m. on election day.

Tucker said the bill would allow county poll workers to begin canvassing ballots as soon as they arrive so clerks can notify voters if a ballot is deficient and give them a chance to cure it before election day. He described the counting process as having "two phases" (canvass and count) and said the bill preserves the rule that ballots are not actually counted until election day, but clarifies review roles for poll workers and county election boards.

On the question of suspected fraud, Tucker said the bill requires that any absentee ballot suspected of being fraudulently submitted must be referred to the local prosecuting attorney and to the State Board of Election Commissioners. He also pointed to 2020 as motivating the change, noting that some counties had questioned whether all absentee ballots could be counted by the statutory 7:30 p.m. deadline and that state officials had chosen to "count all the ballots no matter how long it takes.""The current law says that absentee ballots cannot be counted before 08:30 a.m. on election day," he told the committee, and later added, "we're just gonna count all the ballots no matter how long it takes," describing the policy stance taken by state officials after 2020.

The committee discussed whether the bill overlapped with other recent measures; Tucker said he had incorporated county clerks' feedback into amendments and that the State Board of Election Commissioners had not taken an official position. A motion to pass SB217 carried on a roll-call vote; members recorded aye votes from Senators Bledsoe, English, Hester, Davis and Tucker and no votes from Senators Ballinger and Garner, producing a 5-2 result in committee.

The bill directs the State Board of Election Commissioners to prescribe uniform absentee forms and to promulgate rules on canvassing and chain-of-custody procedures to reduce the risk of boxes being mislabeled or miscounted.