@crazyguy It should be whatever rules were set in place before the ballots were sent out.
If people want to fight about whether it should be received by election day or post marked by election day, the time to do that is before voting starts.
An argument for the postmark deadline is the person can walk to the polls and vote on Election Day or walk to the mailbox. Both are the individual taking the action to vote on the same deadline day.You make it sound like the person didn’t bother to vote on time, but they actually did. It’s just a matter of mail service efficiency, which is out of their hands.
In fact, that is basically the deadline for our military in my state, probably others. Out of country citizens need to sign and date by Election Day and it needs to be received within 10 days after Election Day. A lot of our military fall under that.
I think the fair thing is postmarked by Oct 30 so the majority of ballots arrive on time. Otherwise, the person can walk in their ballot or put in an official ballot box. If the mail is slow, but the person met the Oct 30 deadline it should be sufficient. The only time it matters is when the vote is so close they need the actual count from late ballots. I say Oct 30, but that needs to be decided BEFORE the voting process begins.
Every election states call the winner without having counted or even received all the ballots, because they know the number of outstanding ballots won’t change the winner.
It’s just that now the average person is more aware and making it all into something, but they are unaware about what has gone in for years.
If Minnesota goes to Biden under the new ruling, all of a sudden Trump will say, “that’s not right changing the law 5 days before the election, we should count the ballots.”