Democrat-backed laws authorizing early and permanent absentee voting violate the Delaware Constitution, a state court ruled on Friday.
Writing for the Superior Court of the State of Delaware, Judge Mark Conner determined that legislation greenlighting the use of early and permanent absentee voting in Delaware elections does not comport with the state’s founding document. The lawsuit challenging the statutes in question was brought by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) on behalf of Michael Mennella, an inspector of elections for the Delaware Department of Elections. State Election Commissioner Anthony Albence and the Delaware Department of Elections are defendants in the case.
“The enactments of the General Assembly challenged today are inconsistent with our Constitution and therefore cannot stand,” Conner wrote.
In 2019, the Democrat-controlled General Assembly passed legislation permitting eligible electors to vote in person 10 days prior to Election Day. The legislature had also passed a law in 2010 granting registrants the ability to apply for “permanent absentee status” with the Delaware Department of Elections, which, as PILF explained, effectively gave “an individual eligibility to vote by absentee ballot in perpetuity, without consideration of the applicant’s eligibility in each subsequent election.”
Mennella initially filed his complaint challenging the aforementioned statutes in February 2022. His case wasn’t considered by the judiciary until nearly a year later, however, due to a separate suit he filed that same month challenging a different set of Delaware election procedures. In that case, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled in October 2022 that
