Watson v. Republican National Committee · ¶90

This practice did not falter when the cannons rang out at Fort Sumter. Even when the Civil War took soldiers hundreds of miles from their usual polling places, election day still meant ballot-collection day. States took different approaches to ensure that their soldiers could vote while away from home. Some States allowed soldiers to mail their ballots back home, either directly to local officials or to proxies who would cast them at the polls. E.g., 1863 W. Va. Acts pp. 119–120; 1864 N. Y. Laws pp. 549–551. Others sent commissioners to soldiers’ camps to distribute absentee ballots, collect them, and then deliver them to officials in each soldier’s hometown. E.g., 1864 Conn. Pub. Acts pp. 52–53. A third group of States tasked military officers with administering polling places in the field, complete with ballot boxes and voter-registration lists. On this model, officers collected…

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