Federal judge extends deadline for absentee ballot requests to Tuesday – Twin Falls Times-News

U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill has granted a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction giving Idaho voters more time — until Tuesday — to request absentee ballots for the May primary election.

Winmill ruled in favor of Nicholas Jones for Congress campaign, which sued after the Idaho Secretary of State’s website repeatedly crashed as the 8 p.m. May 19 deadline approached to request absentee ballots. “The concern is those who had access to the internet understood that they could rely on that, that they could use the website, and it did not work,” the judge declared.

Deputy Attorney General Robert Berry argued on behalf of Secretary of State Lawerence Denney that both the state and local county clerks made huge efforts to educate voters about the state’s first all-absentee ballot election and its various deadlines; the ballot went all-absentee because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“The state of Idaho did a very darn good job in responding to the pandemic this election cycle,” Berry told the court in a late-afternoon Friday videoconference hearing.

In legal arguments filed with the court, Berry argued, “The need to request an absentee ballot was and should not have been a surprise to anyone. … It is simply a matter of timing, whereby Plaintiffs exercised poor judgment by waiting until the last minute to vote in the primary.”

But attorney Amy Lombardo, representing the Jones campaign along with several voters who were unable to submit their absentee ballot requests in time because the website wouldn’t work for them, countered that Idaho voters are accustomed to voting on Election Day, which this year was originally to be May 19. “I do think voters shouldn’t be chastised for doing precisely what they do every year,” she told the court.

The judge agreed, and said the sitation was similar to voters who are in line at the polls in a regular election when the polls close at 8 p.m. Those in line at closing time are still allowed to vote.

“They weren’t on notice that the website that was advertised as being available would not be available,” the judge said. “They didn’t find that out until the 18th or 19th of May, when they tried to access it and it failed.”