Early voters in Georgia broke a state record on Tuesday, more than doubling the previous high for votes cast on the first day of early voting.
The swing state will offer several more early voting days before Election Day on Nov. 5, as well as absentee voting through the mail, according to CNN.
Georgia’s new early voting record, plus reports that 100-year-old former President Jimmy Carter, who is on hospice, cast his vote Wednesday, have raised questions about what happens when an early voter dies before Election Day.
Is his vote still counted since he was alive for early voting? Or is it identified and tossed out?
The answer depends on where the hypothetical dead person lived.
Death after early voting
Different states have different rules about how to handle ballots from an absentee voter who died before Election Day.
Around 10 states, including Florida and Montana, require absentee ballots filled out by a since-deceased to be counted, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
But at least nine states, including swing states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, say that opposite: that absentee ballots from people who died cannot be counted.
In a few states, living voters have a right to challenge ballots from people who they believe are dead. If they’re right, the ballot will be rejected, per the National Conference of States Legislatures.
In around half of states, there no rules on the books about what to do when an absentee voter dies.
One roadblock to tossing out ballots from early voters is that ballots are anonymous unless they’re still in one of the signed envelopes used for mail-in voting.
“Once the absentee ballot has been verified and removed from the envelope for counting, the ballot cannot be retraced to the voter,” the National Conference of State Legislatures reported.
Will Jimmy Carter’s vote count if he dies?
Carter voted Wednesday with an early ballot, according to The Washington Post.
A spokesman for the Carter Center declined to say who the former president voted for, but he did point the Post toward past comments about Carter’s support for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Georgia is among the states that don’t address the issue of early voters dying before Election Day in state law.
Since Carter voted Wednesday, the former president’s vote is expected to count even if he dies before Nov. 5, according to Spectrum News.
In Spectrum News’ explainer on the issue, election expert Bernard Fraga from Emory University said that one reason why some states don’t worry about identifying and eliminating votes from people who have died is that there aren’t enough to sway election results.
“If I had to guess the number of people, it’s not enough to swing any election outcome or election result even in the closest of federal or state-wide election races,” he said.
In 2021, election investigators in Georgia found that just four absentee ballots from dead people had been counted in the 2020 election, per The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.