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We may not know who wins the presidential election (or any number of other down-ballot races) on Tuesday night or early Wednesday, and that's OK.

But this year we're expecting slower counts, and the reason is straightforward: In response to the coronavirus pandemic, many states modified their voting rules, broadening access to mail-in voting and accelerating what had already been a rising mail-in voting trend.

Take two swing-state examples: Florida allows counties to process ballots well ahead of Election Day, while officials in Pennsylvania have to wait until the morning of Election Day to begin that work.

Several have topped 2016 numbers for mail ballots returned, even as in-person early voting is opening up in much of the country. Altogether in 2016, there were 58.8 million early votes.

In the presidential battlegrounds of North Carolina and Florida, registered Democrats have cast more ballots than registered Republicans so far. In North Carolina, independent voters have also cast more early ballots than registered Republicans.

Several battleground states are already seeing large numbers of requests for mail ballots. This could make for a long election night in states that prohibit the counting or processing of ballots before election day.

President Donald Trump and top aides are responding to the uproar over his failure to guarantee a peaceful transfer of power by intensifying their efforts to create election chaos

And raising new concerns that the administration is leveraging executive power to bolster the President's political goals, the Justice Department said it was probing "potential issues with mail-in ballots" in Pennsylvania following the discovery of nine discarded ballots.

"We want to make sure the election is honest, and I'm not sure that it can be,"

The Texas Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled in favor of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott's order to limit mail-in ballot drop box locations to one site per county, a decision that largely affects the Houston and Austin areas.

The court ruled that Abbott's order "provides Texas voters more ways to vote in the November 3 election than does the Election Code" and that it doesn't "disenfranchise anyone."

"The plaintiffs complain that limiting early hand-deliveries of mail-in ballots to one office per county requires more travel time for some voters. But this ignores the other options for casting their ballots that these voters have," the opinion read

“Earlier it was because some students weren’t plugged in enough into any virtual communication.” Seven years later, she said she cannot remove the instruction because now students avoid e-mail because it is “too slow compared to texting.”

Just how little are students using e-mail these days? Six minutes a day, according to an experiment done earlier this year by Reynol Junco, an associate professor of library science at Purdue. With the promise of a $10 Amazon gift card, Dr. Junco persuaded students to download a program letting him track their computer habits. During the semester, they spent an average of 123 minutes a day on a computer, by far the biggest portion of it, 31 minutes, on social networking. The only thing they spent less time on than e-mail: hunting for content via search engines (four minutes).

“I never know what to say in the subject line and how to address the person,” Ms. Carver said. “Is it mister or professor and comma and return, and do I have to capitalize and use full sentences? By the time I do all that I could have an answer by text if I could text them.”

Millions of Americans have already cast their ballots ahead of Election Day, smashing mail-in and early voting records and raising election officials' hopes that the eye-popping early vote totals will ease the potential for problems, chaos and conflict at the polls on November 3.

Since voting began in September, there have certainly been issues at the polls, including hours-long waits, allegations of voter intimidation and suppression -- as well as incidents like one in North Carolina on Saturday, where police used pepper spray to break up a march to a polling place

concerns persist that tensions over the bitter contest between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden could boil over on Election Day, whether at the polls or afterward when the results are tallied.

A federal judge on Sunday ordered the United States Postal Service to mandate some of the "extraordinary measures" the agency announced earlier this week to address the slow down of ballot processing in key states.

The order from federal Judge Emmet Sullivan, which comes just two days before Election Day, requires USPS to utilize the Express Mail network -- which guarantees delivery in one to two days -- for all ballots that are traveling longer distances, even after Election Day.

The order comes as the Postal Service's delivery performance in the days before the presidential election has become a major point of contention -- especially in the battleground states where thousands of voters are mailing ballots instead of visiting polling places in person because of the coronavirus pandemic

more than 91 million who already cast early ballots

Tuesday's moment of destiny -- and what could turn into a prolonged count owing to the crush of mail-in votes -- will decide whether Americans reject Trump after a single term or re-up for four more years of his brazen presidency.

The President on Sunday night hinted that he could seek to dismiss Dr. Anthony Fauci after the election after rejecting the admired infectious diseases specialist's science-based recommendations on the pandemic.

The latest election controversy cropped up this week in California, where Republicans installed dozens of unauthorized ballot dropboxes that state officials say are illegal.

The coronavirus pandemic has led to historic interest in mail-in voting, but President Donald Trump and the GOP have spent months attacking the integrity of mail ballots and fighting in court against dropboxes. The California dispute is the latest flashpoint in this ongoing battle."Whether or not it is technically legal, it's extremely problematic for voters," said CNN election law analyst Rick Hasen, who is also a law professor at the University of California, Irvine. He said the unauthorized dropboxes were "not secure" and that the GOP was "asking for trouble."

The California Republican Party installed dozens of unauthorized ballot dropboxes in at least four Southern California counties, where there are competitive House races this year. The party claims it did this as part of an above-board effort to legally collect and return people's ballots.

The Supreme Court has reaffirmed a lower court's block on Wisconsin's plan that would have allowed ballots in the state to arrive up to six days after Election Day.

Democrats and progressive groups asked the justices to intervene after a federals appeals court blocked the ballot-receipt plan.

Republicans argue that the deadline extension threatens the integrity of the election by changing the rules too close to the election, an argument they have made in similar cases. Democrats say extra days are needed because postal delays could disenfranchise many voters

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger stood firm Monday on his account that Sen. Lindsey Graham had hinted that he should try to discard some ballots in Georgia, where a recount is underway after the state went for President-elect Joe Biden in the presidential election.

"He asked if the ballots could be matched back to the voters," Raffensperger told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room" Monday evening.

I got the sense it implied that then you could throw those out for any, if you look at the counties with the highest frequent error of signatures

U.S. election officials looking to construct a safe voting system in a worsening coronavirus pandemic are confronting a grim reality:

there may not be enough time, money or political will to make it happen by the November election.

The possibility the pandemic could last into the fall, or flare again as millions of voters are set to choose the nation’s next president, has state and local officials scrambling for alternatives to help keep voters safe.

Republicans in the Florida Legislature passed an election overhaul bill on Thursday that is set to usher in a host of voting restrictions in one of the most critical battleground states in the country, adding to the national push by G.O.P. state lawmakers to reduce voting access.

The new bill would limit the use of drop boxes; add more identification requirements for those requesting absentee ballots; require voters to request an absentee ballot for each election, rather than receive them automatically through an absentee voting list; limit who could collect and drop off ballots; and further empower partisan observers during the ballot-counting process. The legislation would also expand a current rule that prohibits outside groups from providing items “with the intent to influence” voters within a 150-foot radius of a polling location.

“There was no problem in Florida,” said Kara Gross, the legislative director and senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. “Everything worked as it should. The only reason they’re doing this is to make it harder to vote.”

President Trump is doubling down on claims that the results of the presidential election must be known on election night itself, falsely asserting "that's the way it's been and that's the way it should be."

The decision allows election officials in Pennsylvania to count absentee ballots received as late as Friday, as long as they are postmarked by Nov. 3.

The president denied that he would try to declare victory prematurely.

Suzanne Muscara, 38, sent a threatening letter to the senator’s home in 2018 after becoming upset with her vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court justice, the authorities said.

The woman, Suzanne Muscara, 38, of Burlington, Maine, who was convicted during a daylong trial in November of mailing a threatening communication, will also have to complete three years of supervised release after finishing her prison term, Judge Lance E. Walker of U.S. District Court in Maine ruled.

Ms. Collins depicting her as a stick figure with X’s for eyes. The word “AnthRAX!!!” and “HA HA HA!!!” were also written on the letter. (The Postal Service had been monitoring mail to the senator because of a piece of threatening mail that had been received at her home on Oct. 15.)

On the eve of the election, more than 90 million voters have been sent absentee or mail ballots, and 60 million of them have already been returned.

For postal workers there, shepherding the votes is the latest challenge in an already exhausting year.

The U.S. Postal Service is one of the nation’s largest employers, but the pandemic has made the federal workers who are closest to us more remote.

In the final days of voting, the Postal Service is struggling to ensure timely delivery of ballots in parts of key battleground states like Pennsylvania and Michigan.

The percentage of ballots delivered to election officials nationwide in one to three days has hovered in the low to mid-90s in the past week.

According to an estimate by the United States Elections Project, about 29.6 million mail-in ballots are still outstanding, although it is not clear how many of those were never sent back or reflected decisions by voters to cast their ballots in person.

But government officials say they are emphasizing accuracy over speed in a year when processing an unprecedented flood of mail-in ballots under extended deadlines is taking more time.

"The volume is definitely something that we've never seen before in the state as far as receiving and processing mail-in ballots."

More than 1.2 million ballots had been counted by Friday afternoon, with Joe Biden holding a 20,137-vote lead over President Donald Trump - an edge of about 1.6 points. About 87% of the estimated vote has been tallied, but tens of thousands of votes remain uncounted statewide.

That was when Trump supporters descended on a polling location in Fairfax, Va., and sought to disrupt early voting there by forming a line that voters had to circumvent and chanting, “Four more years!”This was no rogue group. This was no random occurrence. This was an omen — and a harrowing one at that.

Republicans are planning to have tens of thousands of volunteers fan out to voting places in key states, ostensibly to guard against fraud but effectively to create a climate of menace.

bragged to Sean Hannity about all the “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.”