Discussion
RE: https://mastodon.social/@heidilifeldman/117209346171417433
Great (as usual) thread by @heidilifeldman on the current status of the various cases challenging the administration's executive order on vote-by-mail.
Note that how / whether the exec order will affect mail voting in the midterms effectively rests entirely on procedural issues at this point. The merits haven't been addressed (or even fully briefed) yet, and won't be before November.
And there are states (both red and blue) that rely on vote by mail as a primary voting method. Requiring those states to not send out their ballots until the USPS systems are ready is tantamount to telling them they can't hold elections in November, which is a position that even the most rabidly pro-administration court is unlikely to take.
@mattblaze As near as I can tell the goal is send enough states' electoral votes through the Supreme Six's fuckery that the election can be decided by the court.
Remember that elections in most states are run by county offices - that's where the ballots are printed, sent from, returned to, and processed and counted. These offices range from moderately sizeable (places like NYC and LA) to utterly tiny, skewed toward the latter.
Just the election office IT side of complying with the executive order and integrating their systems with the USPS is a MASSIVE undertaking, something normally done with a year or more of lead time and funding.
Install bonfire.cafe
Get the full app experience
Also, in addition to the legal timeline, there is a practical reality to contend with here: there is no USPS system that implements the executive order yet, and nothing for states and county election administrators to integrate (and test) their own systems with even if they wanted to.
And there is simply no time for that to happen before ballots have to start going out for the November midterms, which is very soon (based on both statutory deadlines and practicalities).
@heidilifeldman