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.
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).
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.
@Flux What electoral votes are you talking about? There is no presidential election in November.
@mattblaze Congressional. Stupid fingers.
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.
And all this is setting aside the equally important problem that the database of citizens that these ballots are supposed to be checked against also doesn't exist in any coherent, reliable form.
@mattblaze
Let's implement whatever the Trumpists want for vote by mail in Palm Beach only and test it there this year. I'm sorry for all but one voter there.
@heidilifeldman
In other words, no matter what the courts rule, the reality is that there is simply no way for this to happen before ballots go out for the November election. @heidilifeldman
@OldCoder @heidilifeldman Such a delaration doesn't really affect anything (except as a political statement). Elections are certified by states.
Sure. But perhaps the plan is to ultimately to try to use the military as well as the National Guard. The fact that this would be illegal would be of little interest to Trump or Hegseth.
Hegseth’s moves suggest that the goal has been to eliminate the independence of the military and to transform it into a Trump election taskforce.
When Hegseth was pressed on May 1 to confirm that he wouldn’t use the military to interfere in the election, he declined to answer.
I’m not saying that #Trump, #Hegseth, et. all will succeed in what’s being attempted [whatever it might be]. However, the fact that January 6 theoretically couldn’t succeed didn’t stop the attempt.
The trope where the frog doesn’t realize that the water is heating up is real sometimes. However, events have outpaced that. The past few years have been ludicrous. It’s hardly in doubt that there is nothing these people aren’t capable of.
Q. Secretary Hegseth, if the president asks you to seize ballots or voting machines in States during the 2026 election, will you stand up for the Constitution and say no, or will you salute and do his bidding?
A. It’s yet another gotcha hypothetical, which is your specialty.
@OldCoder @heidilifeldman Please stop making up fantasy doomsday scenarios. The reality is bad enough.
The military/national guard have no capability to run elections, even badly right now. Maybe they could develop that capability, but not by November.
So there are basically two ways for this to go, and I honestly have no idea which one it will be:
(sane option): Everyone recognizes that this can't happen, and the EO has no effect until the courts have ruled on the merits (after November)
(chaos option): USPS refuses to accept/deliver blank ballots in the coming weeks, despite having no mechanism for states to comply, and we end up in completely uncharted territory.
@mattblaze @heidilifeldman The fact that there’s even a question is already a constitutional crisis.
@curtosis @heidilifeldman I think we've been in constitutional crisis territory for a while now, in multiple ways. And I don't say that lightly. The question is what the path back looks like, assuming there is one.
People saying "well counties can just do <something different> for the November election." No. There is no "just do" here at this point. Even a seemingly small change to election procedures, or a shift in the proportion of voters who vote a particular way, is a HUGE deal this close to an election.
Example: "Just tell voters to print their blank ballots at home". Aside from the fact that voter-printed ballots have different processing workflows, how many voters have printers?
@mattblaze @heidilifeldman are there any legal options to prevent chaos option from happening?
if not legal, what are other options available to other institutions/elements of American society?
@Meznor @heidilifeldman See the thread, and Heidi's thread that I referenced.
@mattblaze @heidilifeldman ok. put another way, if USPS defies the TRO and continues implementing its plan (e.g., what if it refuses to mail ballots at all), and is in contempt of court, what enforcement mechanisms exist to stop them? don't states, regardless of the diversity of ways and means they implement elections, rely heavily on the USPS to conduct elections? isn't the chaos option the most likely thing to happen here?
@Meznor @heidilifeldman As I mentioned, this would be essentially uncharted territory.
@mattblaze @heidilifeldman Washington State has a solution, whereby a voter can bypass the USPS for ballot delivery. See https://tinyurl.com/VOTE2026PNW for the #SeattleSolution
@503bartley @heidilifeldman Again, this doesn't scale. Print-at-home ballots (and UOCAVA ballots) typically have to be transcribed onto a proper ballot form by hand at the election office before they're readable by bulk scanners.
The practical details here are brutal.
@mattblaze @heidilifeldman A call just placed to King County (Seattle) elections received the answer "Not necessarily" and "it depends on the paper used to print it, if the paper has the dots". I am awaiting a callback from an expert in the procedure for details.
@503bartley @heidilifeldman There are over 5000 election administration jurisdictions in the US, each using a range of different equipment, running multiple different, sometimes customized, software versions.
There is no universally applicable answer to any question like this, but it's extremely rare for print-at-home ballots to be able to go into the workflow without a substantial amount of manual intervention.
@mattblaze @heidilifeldman I think I'll wait to see what the King County Elections ballots expert says before I draw a conclusion.
@503bartley @heidilifeldman I'm just trying to provide helpful information based on my area of expertise. It's worth exactly what you're paying for it.
@503bartley @heidilifeldman Also, processes that are designed and tested to handle rare exceptions almost never behave predictably at scale.
@mattblaze @heidilifeldman Chaos has been a result of pretty much everything the current administration has tried. In this specific instance the administration may welcome the chaos, especially if they see it as a way to maintain power. Scary times.
@mattblaze @heidilifeldman On the other hand, if their goal is to delegitimize the election rather than sway it, none of the physical reality constraints apply.
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