Six days. Less than a week to Election Day.
If you haven’t yet voted and were planning on voting early/absentee, please make a plan which doesn’t rely on U.S. Mail especially if you live in a large city. There are too many reports of First Class mail taking longer than five days to arrive.
It’s too late to use the mails. Given Supreme Court rulings I urge everyone to now vote in person; early vote or use drop boxes. Protect your health but don’t let the Court and the deliberately crippled Postal Service deprive you of your most precious civil right. Plan your vote.
— Eric Holder (@EricHolder) October 27, 2020
Judge Emmett Sullivan — same judge handling the Flynn case — seems a bit tetchy about the U.S. Postal Service handling of ballots:
NEW: DC fed judge issues unusual highly detailed directive to Postal Service to inform supervisors and workers about retraction of overtime changes. Plans daily hearings on compliance. Aims to ensure absentee ballots are received on time. Via @ColbyBermelhttps://t.co/qKhnSFNguF
— Josh Gerstein (@joshgerstein) October 28, 2020
Worth your time to read the highly-detailed order linked in the Politico article, particularly this bit about the U.S. Mail:
FURTHER ORDERED that by no later than 9:00 AM on October 29, 2020, Defendants shall distribute, in the same form and to the same individuals who were previously advised about the need to “ensure that completed ballots reach the appropriate election official by the state’s designated deadline,” a list of state-specific statutory ballot receipt deadlines, so that the USPS managers and employees can implement the Election Mail guidance that Defendants have recently issued. The parties shall confer and agree and substance of the list. …
You can bet there’s squealing and scrambling going on right now even as I type this at 4:00 a.m.
Will these suits against the USPS be the first cases the new Barrett-added SCOTUS hears if current Postmaster Louis DeJoy refuses to comply and contests Sullivan’s directive?
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There’s another problem with the SCOTUS already, though this is the pre-Barrett/post-RBG version. Seems Justice Kavanaugh has demonstrated what a hack he is making absurd errors in an opinion on voter suppression:
Last night, Brett Kavanaugh handed down one of the sloppiest opinions I’ve ever seen from a Supreme Court justice. It’s riddled with errors and obfuscations and lies. I took a stab at counting them up. https://t.co/j8L3F5iYCQ All due credit to eagle-eyed @Tierney_Megan!
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) October 27, 2020
One of his errors goes right to the problem with the U.S. Mail:
Mistake No. 5: No one thinks they can return their ballot by Election Day if they request it by Oct. 29.
Kavanaugh wrote: “No one thinks that voters who request absentee ballots as late as October 29 can both receive the ballots and mail them back in time to be received by election day.” He cites no support for this assumption, probably because it’s wrong. Many states explicitly allow voters to request absentee ballots even closer to Election Day and instruct them to mail their ballots back. A large number of voters do wait until the last minute to ask for a ballot, which is why a strict deadline disenfranchises so many people. In August, the Postal Service encouraged 46 states to change their deadlines, warning them that ballots requested and returned in accordance with state law might not make it back in time. The Postal Service would not have sent out this warning if “no one” thought the states’ existing deadlines were unrealistic. …
I know there’s been a lot of talk about rejiggering the formulation of the SCOTUS including expansion of the number of justices to ensure improved representation reflecting a center-left country.
But I think we need to have a chat about reformulation including corrections of the existing justices. This opinion by Kavanaugh is so shoddy Congress should consider impeaching and removing him under a Biden presidency. Because it’s ridiculous that Chief Justice John Roberts let this out of his court, Roberts needs to feel a little sting for this as well.
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Trump’s super spreader campaign rally in Omaha, Nebraska was a disaster Tuesday night. A number of elderly attendees had to be taken by ambulance for treatment of hypothermia due to temperatures in the 20s and the distance from the rally site to the parking lot.
It’s bad enough Trump is making campaign stops in places which Trump won by double digits in 2016 — 25 points, to be more specific. But to do so at physical risk to voters who may not yet have cast a vote?
Utterly stupid.
The capper: the campaign is desperate not only for votes but money.
Carville: Well they’re out of money. They stole it all. pic.twitter.com/B13g95ErLe
— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) October 28, 2020
That’s one way to clean up that $421 million dollars of personal debt.
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If you’ve already voted, thank you. Please help get other voters to the polls and make this election a massive blue tsunami — a wave so big they can’t steal this election.