August 14, 2020
By Kevin Breuninger
Former President Barack Obama (click here) slammed President Donald Trump on Friday, accusing his administration of undermining the U.S. Postal Service and attempting to suppress votes during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Everyone depends on the USPS. Seniors for their Social Security, veterans for their prescriptions, small businesses trying to keep their doors open,” Obama said on Twitter in a series of posts.
“They can’t be collateral damage for an administration more concerned with suppressing the vote than suppressing a virus.”
Trump’s Democratic predecessor urged eligible voters in states with early voting options to “do that now.”
“The more votes in early, the less likely you’re going to see a last minute crunch, both at polling places and in states where mail-in ballots are permitted. Then tell everyone you know,” Obama said....
There are no minor issues. The states are preparing for the elections within a global pandemic and it seems as though Trump goes out of his way to pull the rug out from under them.
August 14, 2020
By Elisa Viebeck
New Jersey (click here) will conduct its general election mostly by mail because of the coronavirus pandemic, sending ballots to active registered voters while also providing the option to vote in person, Gov. Phil Murphy (D) announced Friday.
The state piloted a hybrid voting model during its July 7 primary, Murphy said during an interview with CNN and at a later news conference. He touted the experiment as “not perfect, but overwhelmingly a success,” despite President Trump seizing on an alleged criminal voter fraud scheme in Paterson, New Jersey’s third-largest city, during a local election in May.
“All of us recognize the importance of this year’s election,” Murphy said in remarks on Friday afternoon. “Ensuring that every voter has the ability to securely cast their ballot, while protecting public health, is our paramount concern. The recent primary election gave us the opportunity to see what worked and where we could make improvements.”...
The Governors and Secretaries of State will have to provide a timeline to recording all ballots cast. There is no reason why states cannot extend the timeline to all ballots so long as they are dated with a US Post Office date mark no later than November 3, 2020.
Any ballots dated by November 3, 2020 should be counted so long as they arrive 10 business days after the polls close.
August 14, 2020
By Erin Cox, Elise Viebeck, Jacob Bogage and Christopher Ingraham
Anticipating an avalanche of absentee ballots, (click here) the U.S. Postal Service recently sent detailed letters to 46 states and D.C. warning that it cannot guarantee all ballots cast by mail for the November election will arrive in time to be counted — adding another layer of uncertainty ahead of the high-stakes presidential contest.
The letters sketch a grim possibility for the tens of millions of Americans eligible for a mail-in ballot this fall: Even if people follow all of their state’s election rules, the pace of Postal Service delivery may disqualify their votes.
The Postal Service’s warnings of potential disenfranchisement came as the agency undergoes a sweeping organizational and policy overhaul amid dire financial conditions. Cost-cutting moves have already delayed mail delivery by as much as a week in some places, and a new decision to decommission 10 percent of the Postal Service’s sorting machines sparked widespread concern the slowdowns will only worsen. Rank-and-file postal workers say the move is ill-timed and could sharply diminish the speedy processing of flat mail, including letters and ballots....
The Supreme Court ruled against the GOP.
August 13, 2020
By Ian Millhiser
The Supreme Court (click here) just handed a defeat to the Republican Party, rejecting the GOP’s effort to make it harder for voters to cast absentee ballots in Rhode Island. Only three justices publicly dissented in Republican National Committee v. Common Cause Rhode Island - Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch.
Republican National Committee is the GOP’s most recent effort to make it harder for voters to cast absentee ballots amid a pandemic that’s likely to discourage many voters from gathering at the polls....
...The only reason this case was in front of the justices is that the Republican Party, which isn’t even a party to the lawsuit, asked the Court to block this consent judgment. (Federal rules of judicial procedure sometimes allow a non-party to “intervene” in a lawsuit, and even to appeal a judgment that the parties do not wish to appeal.)
But a majority of the Supreme Court rejected the GOP’s arguments. “The state election officials support the challenged decree, and no state official has expressed opposition,” the Court’s brief order in Republican National Committee explains. Under those circumstances, the GOP lacks “a cognizable interest” in forcing the state to enforce a requirement that its own top elections officials wish to suspend....
