Millions of mail-in ballots haven’t yet reached election officials, the Louis DeJoy-sabotaged U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has slowed mail to a crawl in many battleground states, and Trump-appointed judges across the country—possibly up to the Supreme Court—are telling state officials they can’t accept ballots received after poll closing times on Election Day instead of being able to accept ballots postmarked by Election Day but received after it.
The result: If you have not yet mailed in your ballot, don’t do it. Vote—but find another way to do so. In many states there is still early voting going on, whether Friday is the last day or it goes all the way to Monday. In many states you can find out a place to drop off the absentee ballot you can no longer mail—call your local elections official or call the Election Protection hotline at 1-866-OUR-VOTE. In many states you can also bring your absentee ballot with you on Election Day, surrender it, and vote in person, or in some cases vote without doing this as long as you haven’t sent in a mail ballot. Voting America also is a one-stop shop for finding out your voting options.
Defeating Republicans will require all of us to get plugged into GOTV efforts. On Mobilize, hundreds of Democratic campaigns are recruiting volunteers for all sorts of get-out-the-vote activities. Just click here, and search via zip code to find an event nearest you, and sign up to volunteer.
On Thursday night, a federal appeals court ruled that Minnesota can't accept mail ballots after 8 PM on Election Day, overruling the secretary of state’s deadline. When it comes to voting rights, federal courts under Trump are extremely committed to showing that states’ rights are valid only if they’re suppressing, not expanding, the vote. The Supreme Court has allowed Pennsylvania and North Carolina to keep accepting ballots past Tuesday but ordered those ballots to be set aside, setting the stage for the court to overturn an election that hinges on those two states. That’s why we need to make sure it doesn’t by winning much, much bigger.
More than 82 million people have already voted—well over half of the total 2016 turnout. More than 53 million mail ballots have been returned. That’s the good news. The bad news is that there are more than 36 million mail ballots that haven’t been returned. Some of them may already be making their way through the mail, which is now being overseen by a judge to ensure on-time delivery of ballots. And some people may have gotten mail ballots, then decided to vote in person because of what’s going on with the USPS.
But for millions, it may be important to hear the message: Don’t mail your ballot. It is not guaranteed to arrive on time—and in some places, like the places DeJoy has targeted for the biggest mail delays, it is basically guaranteed not to arrive on time. Those places include Pennsylvania, parts of Michigan, and other battleground states where on-time mail delivery has dropped significantly.
Vote. Tell your friends to vote. But don’t mail your ballots. Tell your friends not to mail their ballots.