(CNN) Amber Pflughoeft beamed with pride as she filled out her ballot for the first time last month.
A 20-year-old who'd been fighting bone cancer for a decade, she was fascinated with politics, her mother Tiffany Pflughoeft remembered. And after spending the last midterm election in the hospital following a bone marrow transplant, she was determined to vote this year.
But just a few days after she mailed in her ballot, Amber's condition took a sudden turn for the worse. She went back to the hospital and died in late September.
Now, her ballot will be thrown out under Wisconsin election law. She is one of several dozen Wisconsinites whose votes will be canceled because they passed away after voting early, according to state Elections Commission data provided to CNN through a public records request.
"She was so excited about it," Tiffany said this week. "She died on a Monday, but on Saturday, when she could still talk, she was telling all the nurses and doctors, 'I voted.'"
"We never realized it wouldn't count," she said.
States around the country are divided on whether to count votes from people who cast an early ballot and then die before Election Day. At least a dozen states allow it, more than a dozen others reject those votes, and laws in other states are unclear, recent research from the National Conference of State Legislatures found.
Among the most crucial swing states, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania don't count early ballots cast by voters who die before Election Day, while Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Ohio do, according to the NCSL and state elections officials.
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