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The Postal Service removed mailboxes in Washington, DC, during the inauguration of President Trump in 2017 as a safety measure, Partenheimer said.

The expansion of security measures to other locations across the nation is based on the Postal Service's awareness of "planned protests or other situations involving large crowds" in key cities and areas, Partenheimer said.

Starting eight days before the election, local post-office managers must use “extraordinary measures” to accelerate the movement of ballots — expediting their processing, taking them straight to local election offices and even delivering them on Sundays if need be.

For the people who keep post offices running, workdays lengthened to 12, 14 or even 16 hours.

The modern style of voting by mail, in which people can receive a ballot and return it from home, became common starting only in the 1980s;

large Western states began allowing people to request absentee ballots without giving a reason, so that no one would have to drive long distances to cast a ballot in person.

Postal workers bristle at the accusation that they might be mishandling citizens’ ballots. The employees of the Postal Service, unlike those at private companies, aren’t judged on whether they bring in more revenue or cut costs.

Their mandate is to uphold what they call their universal service obligation, a commitment to deliver mail to and from every part of America,

There is only one Postal Service, but election rules are different in every state. Some states will count every ballot that is postmarked by the day of the election; others will count only those that have made it all the way to election offices.

Mr. Biden’s announcement was his most direct action to date to address the service’s problems. The president’s nominees are Anton Hajjar, the former general counsel of the American Postal Workers Union; Amber McReynolds, the chief executive of the National Vote at Home Institute; and Ron Stroman, who resigned last year as deputy postmaster general and later served on Mr. Biden’s transition as the leader of the agency review team for the Postal Service.

The delays last year prompted a slew of lawsuits that forced the Postal Service to temporarily postpone the operational changes.

Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, praised the president’s announcement on Wednesday, saying in a statement that it was an “important step, and I hope only the beginning.” But Mr. Pascrell added that Mr. Biden should remove the existing board members, whom he said had “been silent and complicit to the DeJoy sabotage.”

On Tuesday, the Postal Service chose Oshkosh Defense, a manufacturer of military vehicles, for a $482 million deal to provide the next generation of postal delivery trucks, over an electric-vehicle maker.

The Postal Service has blamed the pandemic and labor shortages for some of the poor rates. As coronavirus cases surge across the country, the Detroit district reported just 78 percent of its employees were available to work, while Central Pennsylvania reported 84 percent, according to a court filing on Friday.

Backups in mail delivery were better than they once were, but customers were still experiencing delays, Mr. Combs said. The Postal Service has been careful to try to shield ballots from the slowdowns, but some might slip through the cracks, he added.

Color me alarmist, but that sounds like an invitation to do more than just watch. Trump put an exclamation point on it by exhorting those supporters to vote twice, once by mail and once in person, which is of course blatantly against the law.

On Wednesday Trump was asked if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power in the event that he lost to Joe Biden. Shockingly but then not really, he wouldn’t. He prattled anew about mail-in ballots and voter fraud and, perhaps alluding to all of the election-related lawsuits that his minions have filed, said: “There won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.”

“sheriffs” and “law enforcement” who would monitor the polls on his behalf. At a rally in North Carolina, he told supporters: “Be poll watchers when you go there. Watch all the thieving and stealing and robbing they do.”

“I have never in my adult life seen such a deep shudder and sense of dread pass through the American political class.”

And the day after Ginsburg died, I felt a shudder just as deep.

This was an omen — and a harrowing one at that.

“I have never in my adult life seen such a deep shudder and sense of dread pass through the American political class.”

Is a fair fight still imaginable in America? Do rules and standards of decency still apply? For a metastasizing segment of the population, no.

Right on cue, we commenced a fight over Ginsburg’s Supreme Court seat that could become a protracted death match, with Mitch McConnell’s haste and unabashed hypocrisy

On Wednesday Trump was asked if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power in the event that he lost to Joe Biden. Shockingly but then not really, he wouldn’t

“There won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.”

We’re in terrible danger. Make no mistake.

Trump, who rode those trends to power, is now turbocharging them to drive America into the ground.

The week since Ginsburg’s death has been the proof of that. Many of us dared to dream that a small but crucial clutch of Republican senators, putting patriotism above party,

Hah. Only two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, broke with McConnell, and in Collins’s case, there were re-election considerations and hedged wording. All the others fell into line.

Most politicians — and maybe most Americans — now look across the political divide and see a band of crooks who will pick your pocket if you’re meek and dumb enough not to pick theirs first.

“If the situation were reversed, the Dems would be doing the same thing.”

Ugliness begets ugliness until — what? The whole thing collapses of its own ugly weight?

The world’s richest and most powerful country has been brought pitifully and agonizingly low. On Tuesday we passed the mark of 200,000 deaths related to the coronavirus, cementing our status as the global leader, by far, on that front. How’s that for exceptionalism?

What’s the far side of a meltdown? America the puddle? While we await the answer, we get a nasty showdown over that third Trump justice. Trump will nominate someone likely to horrify Democrats and start another culture war: anything to distract voters from his damnable failure to address the pandemic.

University of California-Irvine School of Law, with the headline: “I’ve Never Been More Worried About American Democracy Than I Am Right Now.”

you can be re-elected at the cost that American democracy will be permanently disfigured — and in the future America will be a failed republic — I don’t think either would have taken the deal.

“I don’t think the survival of the republic particularly means anything to Donald Trump.”

“Tribal,” “identity politics,” “fake news” and “hoax” are now mainstays of our vocabulary, indicative of a world where facts and truth are suddenly relative.

“The coronavirus pandemic, a reckless incumbent, a deluge of mail-in ballots, a vandalized Postal Service, a resurgent effort to suppress votes, and a trainload of lawsuits are bearing down on the nation’s creaky electoral machinery,”

But what if there’s bottom but no bounce? I wonder. And shudder.

This country, already uncivil, is on the precipice of being ungovernable, because its institutions are being so profoundly degraded, because its partisanship is so all-consuming, and because Trump, who rode those trends to power, is now turbocharging them to drive America into the ground. The Republican Party won’t apply the brakes.

At some point, someone had to be honorable and say, “Enough.”Hah. Only two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, broke with McConnell, and in Collins’s case, there were re-election considerations and hedged wording. All the others fell into line.

So the lesson for Democrats should be to take all they can when they can? That’s what some prominent Democrats now propose: As soon as their party is in charge, add enough seats to the Supreme Court to give Democrats the greater imprint on it. Make the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico states, so that Democrats have much better odds of controlling the Senate. Do away with the filibuster entirely. That could be just the start of the list

And who the hell are we anymore? The world’s richest and most powerful country has been brought pitifully and agonizingly low. On Tuesday we passed the mark of 200,000 deaths related to the coronavirus, cementing our status as the global leader, by far, on that front. How’s that for exceptionalism?

he might contest the election in a manner that keeps him in power regardless of what Americans really want.

The coronavirus pandemic, a reckless incumbent, a deluge of mail-in ballots, a vandalized Postal Service, a resurgent effort to suppress votes, and a trainload of lawsuits are bearing down on the nation’s creaky electoral machinery,

this election might well degenerate into violence, as Democratic poll watchers clash with Republican poll watchers, and into chaos, as accusations of foul play delay the certification of state vote counts

headline: “I’ve Never Been More Worried About American Democracy Than I Am Right Now.”

“The republic is in greater self-generated danger than at any time since the 1870s,” Richard Primus, a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School, told me, saying that Trump values nothing more than his own power and will do anything that he can get away with

“If you had told Barack Obama or George W. Bush that you can be re-elected at the cost that American democracy will be permanently disfigured — and in the future America will be a failed republic — I don’t think either would have taken the deal.” But Trump? “I don’t think the survival of the republic particularly means anything to Donald Trump.

What gave Primus that idea? Was it when federal officers used tear gas on protesters to clear a path for a presidential photo op? Was it when Trump floated the idea of postponing the election, just one of his many efforts to undermine Americans’ confidence in their own system of government?

Or was it when he had his name lit up in fireworks above the White House as the climax of his party’s convention? Was it on Monday, when his attorney general, Bill Barr, threatened to withhold federal funds from cities that the president considers “anarchist”? That gem fit snugly with Trump’s talk of blue America as a blight on red America, his claim that the pandemic would be peachy if he could just lop off that rotten fruit.

The deadly confrontations recently in Kenosha, Wis., and Portland, Ore., following months of mass protests against racial injustice, speak to how profoundly estranged from their government a significant percentage of Americans feel.

Litigation to determine the next president winds up with the Supreme Court, where three Trump-appointed justices are part of a majority decision in his favor. It’s possible.

Rush Limbaugh — you know, the statesman whom Trump honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom earlier this year — has urged McConnell not even to bother with a confirmation hearing for the nominee in the Judiciary Committee and to go straight to a floor vote. Due diligence and vetting are so 2018

You know who has most noticeably and commendably tried to turn down the temperature? Biden. That’s of course its own political calculation, but it’s consistent with his comportment during his entire presidential campaign, one that has steered clear of extremism, exalted comity and recognized that a country can’t wash itself clean with more muck.

He’s our best bid for salvation, which goes something like this: An indisputable majority of Americans recognize our peril and give him a margin of victory large enough that Trump’s challenge of it is too ludicrous for even many of his Republican enablers to justify. Biden takes office, correctly understanding that his mandate isn’t to punish Republicans. It’s to give America its dignity back.

Maybe we need to hit rock bottom before we bounce back up.But what if there’s bottom but no bounce? I wonder. And shudder.

“I have never in my adult life seen such a deep shudder and sense of dread pass through the American political class.”

Since we’re nowhere close to that point — in particular, testing is still far behind what’s needed — we’re months away from a safe end of the lockdown. This is causing severe hardship for workers, businesses, hospitals and — last but not least — state and local governments, which unlike the federal government must balance their budgets.

Yet at the moment further relief legislation is stalled. And let’s be clear: Republicans are responsible for the impasse.

But the special loan program for small businesses has already been exhausted. State and city governments are reporting drastic losses in revenue and soaring expenses. And the Postal Service is on the edge of bankruptcy.

So we need another large relief package, targeted at these gaps. Where would the money come from? Just borrow it. Right now, the economy is awash in excess savings with nowhere to go. The interest rate on inflation-protected federal bonds is minus 0.56 percent; in effect, investors are willing to pay our government to make use of their money

What policy can and should do is mitigate that hardship. And the last relief package did, in fact, do a lot of the right things. But it didn’t do enough of them.

It’s true that Senate Republicans are trying to push through an extra $250 billion in small-business lending — and Democrats are willing to go along. But the Democrats also insist that the package include substantial aid for hospitals and for state and local governments. And Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, is refusing to include this aid.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, knows what is really happening: McConnell is trying to get more money for businesses while continuing to shortchange state and local governments. After all, “starve the beast” — forcing governments to cut services by depriving them of resources — has been Republican strategy for decades

At a basic level, then, anti-government ideologues are preventing us from responding adequately to the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression.

Their obstructionism will cause vast suffering, as crucial public services are curtailed. It will also compound the economic damage.

In the near future, we’ll see millions of unnecessary job losses as impoverished families cut back spending, as local governments lay off teachers and firefighters, as the post office, if it survives at all, becomes a shadow of its former self.

And many of these job losses will probably persist even after the pandemic subsides.

If there’s a silver lining to all this, it is that the people sabotaging our response to Covid-19 economics may also be sabotaging their own political future. Trump is, after all, counting on rapid economic recovery to erase public memories of his disastrous handling of the pandemic itself. Yet he and his allies in the Senate are making such a recovery much less likely.

As part of the order, USPS must send a memo by 9 p.m., local time, Sunday evening to processing plant managers and division directors saying the extraordinary measures "must be put in place to ensure we delivery every ballot possible by the cutoff time on Election Day."

In addition to the USPS' daily sweeps for election mail, USPS processing plant managers must also certify that all local ballots have been sent to the local election or post office by 10 a.m., local time, on Monday and Tuesday.

In New Jersey and three key states in the election -- Minnesota, North Carolina and Pennsylvania -- USPS must issue "targeted written communication, and make all reasonable efforts to orally convey" to plant managers and division directors that ballots should be processed prior to the deadline in which they need to arrive at election offices on Election Day.

And by 9 a.m., local time, on Monday, USPS is required to send a memo to every local post office reiterating that they must postmark all ballots they receive. Properly postmarked ballots are important because some states allow for pre-Election Day postmarked ballots to arrive after Election Day.

In a document filed in US District Court Sunday, USPS said that on a national level, they moved fewer ballots on time on Saturday than on Friday and their processing score dropping from 93% to 91%

More critical battlegrounds states are now experiencing a drop in scores -- below 90% -- and those already below that did not improve substantially and some dropped even lower.

Republicans in the Trump years have gotten used to competing under rules biased in their favor. They have come to fear that unless the rules favor them, they will lose. And so they have learned to think of biased rules as necessary, proper, and just—and to view any effort to correct those rules as a direct attack on their survival.

What I wrote in 2017 has only become more true since: “We are living through the most dangerous challenge to the free government of the United States that anyone alive has encountered.”

No one has stopped him from defying congressional subpoenas looking into whether he was violating tax and banking laws. No one has stopped him from hiring and promoting his relatives.

Trump’s clemency to Stone reminded others who might hold guilty knowledge—people like Paul Manafort and Ghislaine Maxwell—of the potential benefits to them of staying silent about Trump.

How did Trump get away with using a public power for personal advantage in this way? There’s nothing to stop him. The Constitution vests the pardon power in the president.

a second-term Trump could demand that associates break the law for him—and then protect them when they are caught and face punishment. He could pardon his relatives—and even try to pardon himself.

Abuse of Government Resources for Personal Gain

Mr. Trump’s aides said he enjoyed the frustration and anger he caused by holding a political event on the South Lawn of the White House, shattering conventional norms and raising questions about ethics law violations. He relished the fact that no one could do anything to stop him,

“No one could do anything to stop him.” No one has stopped Trump from directing taxpayer dollars to his personal businesses.

Trump has a lot to hide, both as president and as a businessman. The price of his political and economic survival has been the destruction of oversight by Congress and the discrediting of honest reporting by responsible media

No one has stopped him from using government resources for partisan purposes. No one has stopped him from pressuring and cajoling foreign governments to help his reelection campaign.

No one has stopped him from using his power over the Postal Service to discourage voting that he thinks will hurt him.

The Hatch Act forbids most uses of government resources for partisan purposes. By long-standing courtesy, however, enforcement of that law against senior presidential appointees is left to the president. It’s just assumed that the president will want to comply. But what if he does not? The independent federal agency tasked with enforcing the Hatch Act, the Office of Special Counsel, has found nine senior Trump aides in violation of the law, and has recommended that Trump request their resignation. He has ignored that recommendation.

Abuse of the Pardon PowerOn July 10, 2020, Trump commuted the sentence of his longtime associate Roger Stone. As Stone’s own communications showed, he had acted as an intermediary between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks in 2016. Had Stone cooperated with federal investigators, the revelations might have been dangerous to Trump. Instead, Stone lied to Congress and threatened other witnesses.Just as Stone was supposed to go to prison, Trump commuted his sentence. Commutation was more useful to the cover-up than an outright pardon. A commuted person retains his Fifth Amendment right not to testify; a pardoned person loses that right.

The Justice Department would be debauched ever more radically, becoming Trump’s own law firm and spending taxpayer dollars to defend him against the consequences of his personal wrongdoing. The hyper-politicization of the Justice and Homeland Security Departments would spread to other agencies.

Directing Public Funds to Himself and His CompaniesIn the 230-year history of the United States, no president before Trump had ever tried to direct public dollars to his own companies—so no Congress had ever bothered to specifically outlaw such activity.

Trump’s superpower is his absolute shamelessness. He steals in plain view. He accepts bribes in a hotel located smack in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue. His supporters do not object. His party in Congress is acquiescent. This level of corruption in American life is unprecedented.

A willingness to line the Trump family’s pockets has become a mark of obeisance and identity, like wearing cowboy boots during the George W.  Bush administration

The result of this almost-universal Republican complicity in Trump’s personal corruption has been the neutering of Congress’s ability to act when corruption is disclosed.

Republicans in the House cheerfully support Trump when he defies subpoenas from Democratic chairs, setting a precedent that probably will someday be used against them.

“No one could do anything to stop him.” In his first term, Trump purged the inspectors general from Cabinet departments and punished whistleblowers. In a second Trump term, the administration would operate ever more opaquely to cover up corruption and breaches in national security.

In a second Trump term, radical gerrymandering and ever more extreme voter suppression by Republican governors would become the party’s only path to survival in a country where a majority of the electorate strongly opposes Trump and his party. The GOP would complete its transformation into an avowedly antidemocratic party.

Inciting Political ViolenceTrump has used violence as a political resource since he first declared his candidacy, in the summer of 2015. But as his reelection prospects have dimmed in 2020, political violence has become central to Trump’s message. He wants more of it

“The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order,” Trump’s adviser Kellyanne Conway said on Fox & Friends on August 27. Two nights later, a 600-vehicle caravan of Trump supporters headed into downtown Portland, Oregon, firing paintball guns and pepper spray, driving toward a confrontation during which one of them was shot dead.

The people best positioned to regulate the level of political violence in the country are local police, whom Trump has again and again urged to do their work in ways that support him, no matter how “tough” that requires them to be. The police are represented by unions often aligned with the Trump campaign

“I can tell you,” Trump said in a March 2019 interview with Breitbart News, “I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump—I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough—until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”

Trump’s appeal is founded on a racial consciousness and a racial resentment that have stimulated white racist terrorism in the United States and the world, from the New Zealand mosque slaughter (whose perpetrator invoked Trump) to the Pittsburgh synagogue murders to mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Gilroy, California. In recent weeks, political violence has caused those deaths in Kenosha and Portland

It’s a trick of authoritarian populists like Trump to proclaim themselves leaders of “the people,” even as large majorities of the electorate reject them. The authoritarian populist defines “the people” to exclude anyone who thinks differently. Only his followers count as legitimate citizens.

Legend has it that in the 1870s, “Boss” William Tweed, the famously corrupt New York City politician, taunted his critics by saying, “What are you going to do about it?”* Trump’s relentless defiance of law and decency does the same. Congress has done nothing. So it’s up to voters.

Rising Covid-19 cases in nearly every state add another problematic layer to preparations for Election Day, escalating voters' fears about going to a crowded polling place and potentially threatening the loss of critical polling workers who test positive or have to quarantine.

The coronavirus pandemic led to a chaotic primary in several states during the spring, prompting many states to make major changes to their voting rules to encourage more ballots to be cast by mail or ahead of Election Day.

"Everyone spreading out when they vote has been key to safely voting during this pandemic," Sims said. "We do still expect steady turnout on Election Day."

In Texas, a federal judge set a hearing Monday on a Republican challenge to 100,000 votes cast in Harris County, the Democratic stronghold including Houston, via drive-thru voting centers.

Local election officials are hopeful that all of the early voting will make things smoother on Tuesday, even in places where lines were a major problem during the primary, like Detroit.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said at a news conference last week. "Because two thirds of our citizens will likely vote absentee or prior to Election Day, we will see a third of our citizens, probably about 2 million, vote in person on Election Day."

will turnout be significantly smaller than normal because so many voted ahead of time? Or is it merely foreshadowing a record-breaking overall vote total -- and there will be long lines on November 3, too, when voting will take longer than normal due to the pandemic?

The coronavirus pandemic, which took hold in the US just after Biden emerged as the winner of the crowded Democratic primary, scrambled many of the remaining primaries.

many states turned to expanding early voting, some allowing all voters to request an absentee ballot and others moving most of their election to vote by mail

two factors turned more voters to cast ballots early and in person. One was that Democrats began to shift their strategy on in-person voting, encouraging voters to vote early and in-person, due to a higher rate of ballot rejection to absentee ballots. The second was that the US Postal Service began to see service delays this summer under new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major Trump donor who had implemented cost-cutting measures.

Texas surpassed its 2016 vote total even before the weekend. More than 9.6 million people voted during the three-week early voting period that concluded Friday night, beating the state's 9 million turnout in 2016.

Despite massive turnout levels across the country, there are still millions of mail ballots in the key battleground states that were requested by voters but haven't been returned, according to the latest data from Edison Research.

In most states, information about unreturned ballots is public information, and is mined by political campaigns. Campaigns use this data to aggressively target their supporters, during the final stretch of the race, to cast their vote.

"We are now focused on building a reserve pool of 1,500 workers who can be deployed across the state on Election Day in the event there are any last-minute worker changes or shortages," Michigan Secretary of State spokesperson Tracy Wimmer told CNN on Friday.

In Kent County, which includes Grand Rapids, county elections director Gerrid Uzarski told CNN last week that "some" poll workers were quarantining after being exposed to Covid-19, and would no longer be working on Election Day. On top of those quarantining, Uzarski added that "some" other poll workers have decided that they do not want to risk coming into work on Election Day because of the rising cases across the state.

In a statement provided to CNN on Saturday, the FBI's Washington field office said that "the FBI and our U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Postal Inspection Service partners are investigating a suspicious letter received at a U.S. government mail facility. At this time, there is no known threat to public safety."

"We are aware of the concerning reports of packages containing ricin directed toward US federal government sites," Mary-Liz Power, chief spokeswoman for Canada's Minister of Public Safety Bill Blair, told CNN on Saturday.

Ricin is a highly toxic compound extracted from castor beans that has been used in terror plots. It can be used in powder, pellet, mist or acid form. If ingested, it causes nausea, vomiting and internal bleeding of the stomach and intestines, followed by failure of the liver, spleen and kidneys, and death by collapse of the circulatory system.

SolarWinds has some 300,000 customers but says "fewer than 18,000" installed the version of its Orion products earlier this year that now appears to have been compromised.

Microsoft has now taken control of the domain name that hackers used to communicate with systems that were compromised by the Orion update, according to security expert Brian Krebs. The company's analysis, he added, should help reveal the scope of the affected companies and agencies.

Many U.S. national security agencies made major efforts to prevent Russia from interfering in this year's election. But those same agencies seem to have been blindsided by news that hackers — suspected to be Russia's foreign intelligence service, the SVR — were digging around inside U.S. government systems, possibly since the spring.

The intruders were careful to cover their tracks, Gerstell said. "You couldn't tell that they came in, you couldn't tell that they left the back door open. You couldn't even tell necessarily when they came in, took a look around and when they left."

The incident is the latest in what has become a long list of suspected Russian electronic incursions into other nations – particularly the U.S. – under President Vladimir Putin.

So far, some U.S. government departments and agencies have acknowledged they are investigating the breaches but have provided few details. The White House has been silent about the suspected Russian hack.

"This SolarWinds hack is very problematic, very troublesome, because it's not at all clear exactly how we should respond," Gerstell said. Part of the problem, he added, is that it's not clear what the hackers did after gaining access.

The intrusion could simply be a case of espionage, he said, of one government trying to understand what its adversary is doing.

The company said, "We have been advised that this incident was likely the result of a highly sophisticated, targeted, and manual supply chain attack by an outside nation state, but we have not independently verified the identity of the attacker."

The cybersecurity firm announced last week that a "highly sophisticated state-sponsored adversary" stole its "red team" tools, which are used to test security vulnerabilities in its customers' computer networks. FireEye's clients include government agencies.

"We believe this is nation-state activity at significant scale, aimed at both the government and private sector," the company said as it shared some details about what it called "the threat activity we've uncovered over the past weeks."

The agency said Sunday that it "is aware of active exploitation of SolarWinds Orion Platform software" that was released between March and June. The agency is urging any affected organizations to take steps to detect intrusions and to take countermeasures.

Ms. Muscara had faced a maximum sentence of 10 years and a $250,000 fine. She has been incarcerated since her arrest and will receive credit for the 18 months of her confinement, Andrew McCormack, an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Maine, said in an interview on Friday.Editors’ PicksHow the Trump Era Has Strained, and Strengthened, Politically Mixed Marriages‘We Don’t Have to Put Up With This’: A Candid Conversation About BodiesThe Year of BlurAdvertisementContinue reading the main story

n June, a Mississippi man was charged with threatening Representative Bennie Thompson and his staff members. And this month the F.B.I. arrested more than a dozen right-wing extremists whom they accused of plotting to kidnap and murder Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.

None of this is likely to make much difference, since everyone is already locked in on Russiagate, but it reminds us of a central reality of 2020: We know who Donald Trump is.

Trump's biggest scandals -- his fawning servility to Russia, his attempts to blackmail the Ukrainians into helping his campaign, his relentless self-enrichment schemes --- have all played out in real-time for everyone to see. I can't remember who said it, but with Trump there may be some secrets left, but there are no mysteries.

I think this goes to the heart of the differences between Never Trump and the anti-anti-Trumpers. The question is how to think of Trump: as a somewhat unsavory conservative with ghastly manners, or as someone who is fundamentally dangerous -- and therefore off the normal axis of right/ left politics

Under intense pressure, Trump's postmaster general seems to be backing down from his plans to "reform" the postal service before the election. But a lot of damage has already been done, especially to the public's confidence in mail-in voting, which may have been the point all along. 

Many callers were alarmed that they had not received a ballot. For some, it was because they had not checked a box on their application for a mail ballot for the primary, asking to receive a general-election mail ballot. “There was a little wee tiny box on there to check,” she told one voter. “Don’t worry about it. Just go and vote.”

She told an upset caller that his ballot had been mailed on Oct. 16, two weeks earlier. “It’s kind of a long time if you haven’t gotten it,” she said. The voter could either visit Ms. Kuznik’s office to have the original ballot canceled and a replacement issued, or vote using a provisional ballot in person on Tuesday.

Ms. Kuznik said: “Yeah, I apologize, it’s been very, very busy here. But we will get you a ballot. We want you to vote.”

“Hold on for a minute,” Ms. Kuznik told a phone caller while helping Ms. Nason. “I’m right in the middle of processing a voter, and I will look up and see what’s going on with that.”

Many election analysts believe Pennsylvania is the knife’s edge on which the race is balanced, the closest of the three “blue wall” states where Joseph R. Biden Jr., if he sweeps them, has his most likely path to the White House.

“We’ll go as quickly as we can, but we’re not going to rush it,” she said. “It’s not the Super Bowl. Nobody’s going to hoist a trophy on election night.”

A complicated two-envelope ballot, uncertainty over the reliability of the Postal Service and a glitchy online system for tracking returned votes have caused Ms. Kuznik to be bombarded by callers. And, though to a lesser extent, she has also been visited by a stream of walk-ins at her small second-floor office in the county administration building, where an American flag was stuck into a dying plant above her desk.

The state-run portal intended to track mail ballots was unreliable, Ms. Kuznik said. By using a database available only to election officials, she was able to reassure voters about the status of a ballot — in nearly all cases, it had been received

With more Republicans expected to vote on Election Day and Democrats favoring mail ballots in Pennsylvania, when to count and report results have become partisan flash points. Mr. Trump has demanded, without a basis in law, that the vote leader on election night be named the winner. Democrats are braced for early returns from in-person voters to show a significant Trump lead, with the tide shifting bluer as mail ballots are reported.

In Armstrong County, the plan is to open mail ballots and flatten them out in a workroom behind Ms. Kuznik’s office. Workers escorted by sheriff’s deputies will carry the ballots to the public works garage, where the county keeps its scanners

Cases from North Carolina and Pennsylvania are pending before the court, the latter a second attempt after a 4-to-4 deadlock last week. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was confirmed and sworn in to the Supreme Court on Monday night, could cast the decisive vote in that case

“That extension of Wisconsin’s ballot-receipt deadline ensured that Covid-related delays in the delivery and processing of mail ballots would not disenfranchise citizens fearful of voting in person,” Justice Kagan wrote. “Because of the court’s ruling, state officials counted 80,000 ballots — about 5 percent of the total cast — that were postmarked by Election Day but would have been discarded for arriving a few days later.”

Many state parties and officials continue to view voting by mail as essential amid the coronavirus pandemic.

As the president falsely claims that mail balloting is rife with fraud, and as the election system has been overtaxed by the vote-by-mail surge, voters across the country have been left to navigate a confusing process.

In Madison, Wis., by far the state’s most Democratic stronghold, the city clerk’s office received so many phone calls from voters worried about the Postal Service that on Saturday it dispatched 1,000 poll workers to more than 200 city parks. Their job was to collect ballots in an event the city called “Democracy in the Park.”

municipal fire stations next week.

The events gather groups of voters to drop off their absentee ballots in person at elections offices or drop boxes.

“I think Trump and the Republicans in general are trying to screw up mail-in voting,” said Mr. Velchoff,

On Thursday, the Biden campaign said it would begin door-to-door canvassing in battleground states.

“Our thought has always been that if we get 1,000 Democrats to vote by mail that wouldn’t have voted otherwise, and we lose 10 percent due to mistakes, we still gained 900 votes,” Mr. Bright said.

Officials there recently warned that a decision from the State Supreme Court instructing officials to discard so-called “naked ballots” — those that arrive without a secrecy envelope — could risk up to 40,000 votes in the city. That’s a significant amount in a Democratic city where Mr. Biden needs to run up the margins to have a chance at winning back Pennsylvania.

In Wisconsin, Republicans have sought to block officials from conducting mass ballot collections.

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott issued a proclamation on Thursday restricting counties to just one ballot drop-off site each, requiring some of the state’s largest and most Democratic counties to close facilities on Friday.

Despite repeated investigations and plenty of evidence that her psychic claims are pure fiction, we have not been able to find a single government agency -- in the U.S. or abroad -- that has ever been able to corner Duval for questioning

She signed a settlement with the U.S. Postal Service in 2007 in which she denied any wrongdoing, but no one associated with the case would tell us where the signature came from.

One of the last recorded sightings of this same woman was a high-profile appearance in Russia in 2008. It was there that she predicted that an African-American would become president of the United States (just a few weeks before the election took place).

In recent years, though, Turks have been engaged in an ideological contest over Gallipoli’s legacy. With the rise of the country’s Islamist government under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan have come efforts to diminish the role of Ataturk, who established Turkey under secular principles. The military, which once had a predominant role over politics in Turkey, has also been pushed aside under Mr. Erdogan.

In victory, the Turks ended decades of Ottoman defeats on the edges of the empire and emerged with a new sense of nationalism — and a leader, Mustafa Kemal, later known as Ataturk, who would lead the country to independence after the war ended. Mustafa Kemal, then a young officer, met the invading Australians with his men on the day of the landing and earned a reputation as a military genius for his success.

In defeat, the Australians gained what many historians have described as the first embers of a national consciousness, apart from their British colonial legacy. “It’s certainly seen today as the beginning of a real Australian self-identity,” Rupert Murdoch said.

The trenches are still there, carved in the green hills of the slim Gallipoli Peninsula just across the Dardanelles,

It is hallowed ground for battlefield tourists, mostly Turks and Australians

Almost a hundred years ago, it was the place where World War I was supposed to turn in the Allies’ favor, but instead it became one of the great slaughters of the Great War.

Gallipoli campaign has taken on an outsize importance as the bloody event that became the foundation of a modern national identity.

In September 1915, with the slaughter unfolding on Gallipoli but news limited in Australia because of military censorship

Australian prime minister authorizing him to look into the postal service for the soldiers.

were needlessly being sent to slaughter by incompetent British officers, he agreed to

When the commanding general at Gallipoli, Sir Ian Hamilton, learned of Keith Murdoch’s plan to evade the censorship rules, he had him detained at a port in France and the letter was destroyed.

“As he was writing his letter, the editor of The Times looked in and said, ‘What are you doing, young man?’ ”

“I’ve got to show this to the chief.” B

The 8,000-word letter, detailing what Keith Murdoch called “one of the most terrible chapters in our history,”

Keith Murdoch later came under sharp criticism in Britain for breaking the censorship rules, and many in the British establishment, including Churchill, never forgave him,

He had a perfectly clear conscience,”

The Australian government recently selected 8,000 people from a lottery to attend anniversary commemorations next year at the beaches in Turkey.

In those days, people believed that nations were born in blood,” he said.

named for the acronym of the force that landed there, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, just as thousands of his fellow Australians do each year.

“My grandfather fought here,” he said. “But he never talked about it.”

“Our kids, our grandkids, want to come here more than us or our parents did,” he said.

“Gallipoli is the place that for the first time, after a century of defeats, the Turks were successful,”

The Islamists say, ‘We defeated the infidels,'”

Many conservative Turkish municipal governments have been organizing free battlefield tours, with a message delivered

“They don’t have much education. They’ll believe in anything.”

In 1934, Ataturk famously wrote a letter to Australian mothers, saying, “having lost their lives on this land, they have become our sons as well.”

The truth is, they just wanted to kill one another and win the war, something evident in the letters from the front.

“Everything is so quiet and still one would never dream that two opposing forces, each eager for the other’s blood, were separated by only a few yards – and in places only a few feet.”

Many experts feared that rejection rates would mushroom even more as mail voting reached new highs this fall. Instead, it appears that many voters have risen to the challenge.

“Historically, you’ve seen about 1 percent of ballots get bounced for one reason or another, mostly because of lateness,” said Nate Persily, a Stanford University professor of law and an expert on election administration. “But people are more attuned to the deadline this year, and voters are more aware of the criteria for casting absentee ballots.

“We’ve added so many layers of security to the system that redundancies built in in the ’60s and ’70s, we don’t need any more,” Jared Dearing, the director of the Kentucky Elections Commissions, said last week. Even those voters whose ballots are rejected, he said, are automatically notified by email within an hour.

Election officials also say many voters appear more motivated to cast ballots this year,

It is not only voters who are more aware of the potential pitfalls in voting by mail. Voting officials also have come to recognize that a high rejection rate could have real-world consequences in a close election.

In every county, we’re having massive efforts on the ground” to fix ballot mistakes, Mr. Smith said. “And we have never seen anything like that in any previous election

In some other states, voters who make mistakes are simply out of luck. Only 18 states require that voters be notified if their ballot has a missing signature or a signature discrepancy, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

“If election officials and voters are able to vote by mail in such high numbers, yet see so few ballots rejected during a pandemic, that will have been one of the great accomplishments in American democracy,”