Romney Campaign and GAB Settle Ballot Lawsuit

The Romney campaign and Wisconsin’s elections agency have resolved a lawsuit challenging the way some local clerks handled absentee ballots for military voters.

The Romney campaign initially filed the lawsuit because some clerks did not send out absentee ballots to military voters early enough. Federal law requires them to be sent out 45 days before the election.

But because Wisconsin law provides a cushion of an extra three days, the number of ballots that were in question ended up being relatively small. The Government Accountability Board’s Mike Haas says that of the 4,400 military and overseas ballot requests that were sent to clerks before the deadline, a total of four ballots were sent back late, “We know that two of them have been returned. The other two are following up on to find out exactly what the status is.”

Under an agreement reached with the Romney campaign, clerks for those two military voters with outstanding ballots have been ordered to wait until the Monday after the November election to count those ballots as long as they were postmarked by Election Day.