Texas order allowing counties to have multiple mail-in ballot drop off sites is upheld, but appeal will likely halt openings| Jolie McCullough/The Texas Tribune

A state appeals court has upheld a Travis County State district court order allowing Texas counties to have multiple drop-off locations for hand delivery of absentee ballots, undercutting Gov. Greg Abbott’s recent directive limiting counties to one drop-off site.But it remains unclear if the intermediate court’s decision will lead to the reopening of ballot drop-off locations that were shut down in Harris and Travis counties after Abbott’s order. Abbott and Texas Secretary of State Ruth Hughs planned to immediately appeal the ruling to the Texas Supreme Court to again block the order from taking effect, the attorney general’s office said.The lawsuit, filed in Travis County, is one of several state and federal court challenges to Abbott’s Oct. 1 order, which shut down three ballot drop-off locations in Travis County and 11 in Harris County and halted plans for more drop-offs in other counties. Last week, a federal appeals court upheld the Republican governor’s order under federal law, overturning a lower court’s ruling.

Texas Supreme Court stays order that had blocked Gov. Greg Abbott’s mail ballot drop-off limits | James Barragán/The Dallas Morning News

The Texas Supreme Court on Saturday stayed a lower court’s order that had blocked Gov. Greg Abbott’s order limiting counties to one mail ballot drop-off site. The decision followed a ruling Friday by Texas’ Austin-based Third Court of Appeals that had upheld a state judge’s order blocking Abbott’s order. The state had appealed the Third Court of Appeals order. The state Supreme Court was still reviewing whether to take further action in the case and ordered both sides to file their responses by 5 p.m. Monday. By then, there will be just more than one week left for voters to return their mail ballots in person to early voting clerks around the state. The case centers on whether local elected officials can accept mail ballots at satellite offices. Harris County had told voters it would accept such ballots at 11 of the early voting clerk’s annexes. Travis County and Fort Bend Counties also planned to offer multiple drop-off sites.

Pennsylvania: Talks collapse on a deal to let counties open mail ballots before Election Day | Cynthia Fernandez and Jonathan Lai/Philadelphia Inquirer

Negotiations between the Republican-led legislature and Gov. Tom Wolf to let counties begin opening mail ballots in Pennsylvania before Election Day appeared to collapse Wednesday, setting up a potential nightmare scenario that some fear could leave the state counting millions of ballots for days after Nov. 3.The Democratic governor and legislative leaders had been negotiating behind closed doors as recently as Tuesday to change the election code after months of inaction. But the General Assembly adjourned Wednesday and is not scheduled to reconvene until Nov. 10, a week after the election. In adjourning, Republicans turned away pleas from county elections officials across the state, who said allowing them to open ballots before Election Day would reduce the staffing strain and administrative headaches on top of whatever issues they’re dealing with during in-person voting. Without a deal, the days-long process of counting mail ballots can’t begin until 7 a.m. on Election Day, potentially leaving the results unclear for days and opening room for candidates to falsely declare victory. As the day ended, both sides were left pointing fingers.

Iowa Supreme Court upholds Republican law on absentee voting requests | Stephen Gruber-Miller/Des Noines Register

The Iowa Supreme Court has upheld a new law making it harder for county auditors to process absentee ballot requests with missing or incomplete information, days before Iowa’s deadline to request a ballot for the 2020 election.The court issued a decision Wednesday evening upholding a Republican-supported law that prevents auditors from using the state’s voter registration database to fill in any missing information or correct errors when a voter requests an absentee ballot. The law instead requires the auditor’s office to contact the voter by telephone, email or physical mail.The League of United Latin American Citizens and Majority Forward, a Democratic-aligned nonprofit organization that supports voter registration and turnout efforts, sued Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, seeking to have the law declared unconstitutional. They said auditors have used the database to correct errors in the past and that the law burdens Iowans’ right to vote.A district court upheld the law last month, and the Supreme Court on Wednesday affirmed the lower court’s decision.

Maryland: Montgomery County election officials reject ballot fraud claims in YouTube video | Rebecca Tan/The Washington Post

Elections officials in Maryland’s most populous jurisdiction held an emergency meeting Wednesday to discuss a viral video alleging that an election worker attempted to tamper with a mailed-in ballot.A thorough investigation revealed no evidence of fraud or misconduct, Montgomery County officials said, but they’re concerned that the video may have spread some damaging misinformation.“Something like this just feeds into people who believe mail-in voting is fraudulent,” said the county’s elections board chair, Jim Shalleck, a Republican appointed by Gov. Larry Hogan (R). “It’s very unfortunate.” … In actuality, Karpinski said, what the clip captured was the canvass worker darkening an oval that had been filled in too lightly, to ensure that it would be picked up by the ballot scanners. Karpinski said that protocol has been in place for election workers since he started working for the elections board in 2003 and is designed to ensure that as many eligible ballots as possible are counted.

National: Here’s Why Concerns About Absentee Ballot Fraud Are Overhyped | Whose Vote Counts | Pat Beall, Catharina Felke, Sarah Gelbard, Jackie Hajdenberg, Elizabeth Mulvey and Aseem Shukla/Frontline

Leila and Gary Blake didn’t want to miss elk hunting season. It was 2000, and the election conflicted with their plans, so the Wyoming couple requested absentee ballots.But the Blakes had moved from 372 Curtis Street five miles down the road to 1372 Curtis Street, crossing a town line. When they mailed their votes using the old address, they were criminally charged. The misdemeanor case was settled with $700 in fines and a few months’ probation, but two decades later, the Blakes are still listed as absentee ballot fraudsters in the Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database. Far from being proof of organized, large-scale vote-by-mail fraud, the Heritage database presents misleading and incomplete information that overstates the number of alleged fraud instances and includes cases where no crime was committed, an investigation by USA TODAY, Columbia Journalism Investigations and the PBS series FRONTLINE found. Although the list has been used to warn against a major threat of fraud, a deep look at the cases in the list shows that the vast majority put just a few votes at stake.

North Carolina: Court lets state keep absentee deadline extension | Jonathan Drew/Associated Press

North Carolina can accept absentee ballots that are postmarked by Election Day for more than a week afterward, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals declined to block an extension for accepting the ballots that was announced in late September. The State Board of Elections decided then that absentee ballots could be accepted until Nov. 12 as long as they were mailed by Election Day, lengthening the timeframe from three to nine days. The change was made as part of a legal settlement with voting rights advocates.State and national Republican leaders went to court to fight the deadline extension. But the federal appeals court denied their emergency request to block the change.The court’s majority opinion notes that ballots must still be postmarked by Election Day to be counted. The opinion says that “everyone must submit their ballot by the same date. The extension merely allows more lawfully cast ballots to be counted, in the event there are any delays precipitated by an avalanche of mail-in ballots.”

Michigan appeals court reinstates Election Day mail-in ballot deadline as early voting surge continues | Elise Viebeck, John M. Glionna and Douglas Moser/The Washington Post

A state appeals court in Michigan moved up the deadline for voters to return mail-in ballots, reimposing a cutoff favored by Republicans during a continuing surge in early and mail-in voting around the country.With a little over two weeks until the election, a panel from the Michigan Court of Appeals on Friday reversed a lower court’s ruling that said ballots could be counted if they were postmarked before Election Day and received within 14 days. The extension would have made Michigan’s deadline one of the most generous in the country. Voters in the state now must return their mail-in ballots by 8 p.m. on Nov. 3.The decision — and the plaintiffs’ plans to appeal — arrived amid further signs of record turnout in mail-in and early voting this year, continuing a trajectory that could lead to a majority of votes being cast before Election Day for the first time in U.S. history.

National: Top Senate Republican pushes back against Trump’s unsubstantiated claims mail-in-voting leads to mass fraud | Manu Raju and Clare Foran/CNN

A Senate GOP leader raised concerns on Wednesday over President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that mail-in-voting leads to mass fraud, arguing that Republicans should instead be encouraging voters to use the method in order to compete in a consequential election that will determine control of Congress and the White House. “Mail-in voting has been used in a lot of places for a long time,” Senate Majority Whip John Thune, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said in the Capitol. “And honestly, we got a lot of folks, as you know, who are investing heavily to try to win that war, it’s always a war too for mail-in ballots. Both sides compete and it’s always an area where I think our side — at least in my experience — has done pretty well.” The South Dakota Republican added, “I don’t want to discourage — I think we want to assure people it’s going to work. It’s secure and if they vote that way, it’s going to count.” The comments come as a range of Republican officials throughout the country have reacted with growing alarm to the President’s attacks on mail-in ballots, saying his unsubstantiated claims of mass voting fraud are already corroding the views of GOP voters, who may ultimately choose not to vote at all if they can’t make it to the polls come November.

Nevada: Trump campaign sues Nevada over bill expanding mail-in voting for general election | Michelle Rindels/Nevada Independent

President Donald Trump’s campaign has sued Nevada over a contentious bill recently approved in the ongoing special session of the Nevada Legislature that expands mail-in voting for the 2020 general election, saying it would make voter fraud “inevitable.” The lawsuit, filed late Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Nevada against Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, comes after the president spent the past three days criticizing the move to a mostly mail election through tweets accusing Democrats of “an illegal late night coup” and in a press conference calling the measure a “disgrace.” Plaintiffs say the bill forces Republicans to expend resources educating people about the changes and encouraging them to participate. “The RNC has a vital interest in protecting the ability of Republican voters to cast, and Republican candidates to receive, effective votes in Nevada elections and elsewhere,” the suit says. “Major or hasty changes confuse voters, undermine confidence in the electoral process, and create incentive to remain away from the polls.” The bill, AB4, passed on party lines over the last few days and was signed into law on Monday. It specifies that in the November general election, and any others that happen in the wake of a statewide emergency or disaster directive, election officials will send all active registered voters a mail-in ballot.

Editorials: Trump lets on that his attack on voting-by-mail is fake | Jennifer Rubin/The Washington Post

President Trump’s attack on voting by mail — a practice in effect since the Civil War, and used exclusively by some states and widely by others with virtually no sign of fraud — has been a transparent attempt to discredit an election he looks likely to lose. It has also been counterproductive, as Republican state and local officials have discovered. The Post reports: “President Trump’s unfounded attacks on mail balloting are discouraging his own supporters from embracing the practice, according to polls and Republican leaders across the country, prompting growing alarm that one of the central strategies of his campaign is threatening GOP prospects in November. Multiple public surveys show a growing divide between Democrats and Republicans about the security of voting by mail, with Republicans saying they are far less likely to trust it in November.” Apparently, this has set off alarm bells among Republican operatives in Florida, where many if not most voters in the mammoth elderly population will not go to the polls in person. What if they do not vote at all?

National: Postal Service backlog sparks worries that ballot delivery could be delayed in November | Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Jacob Bogage/The Washington Post

The U.S. Postal Service is experiencing days-long backlogs of mail across the country after a top Trump donor running the agency put in place new procedures described as cost-cutting efforts, alarming postal workers who warn that the policies could undermine their ability to deliver ballots on time for the November election. As President Trump ramps up his unfounded attacks on mail balloting as being susceptible to widespread fraud, postal employees and union officials say the changes implemented by Trump fundraiser-turned-postmaster general Louis DeJoy are contributing to a growing perception that mail delays are the result of a political effort to undermine absentee voting. The backlog comes as the president, who is trailing presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in the polls, has escalated his efforts to cast doubt about the integrity of the November vote, which is expected to yield record numbers of mail ballots because of the coronavirus pandemic. On Thursday, Trump floated the idea of delaying the Nov. 3 general election, a notion that was widely condemned by Democrats and Republicans alike. He has repeatedly gone after the Postal Service, recently suggesting that the agency cannot be trusted to deliver ballots.

National: Despite virus threat, Black voters wary of voting by mail | Corey Williams/Associated Press

Despite fears that the coronavirus pandemic will worsen, Victor Gibson said he’s not planning to take advantage of Michigan’s expanded vote-by-mail system when he casts his ballot in November. The retired teacher from Detroit just isn’t sure he can trust it. Many Black Americans share similar concerns and are planning to vote in person on Election Day, even as mail-in voting expands to more states as a safety precaution during the pandemic. For many, historical skepticism of a system that tried to keep Black people from the polls and worries that a mailed ballot won’t get counted outweigh the prospect of long lines and health dangers from a virus that’s disproportionately affected communities of color. Ironically, suspicion of mail-in voting aligns with the views of President Donald Trump, whom many Black voters want out of office. Trump took it a step further Tuesday, suggesting a “delay” to the Nov. 3 presidential election — which would take an act of Congress — as he made unsubstantiated allegations in a tweet that increased mail-in voting will result in fraud. “I would never change my mind” about voting in person in November, said Gibson, who is Black and hopes Trump loses. “I always feel better sliding my ballot in. We’ve heard so many controversies about missing absentee ballots.”

Connecticut: Absentee voting expansion presents challenges for municipal governments | Sten Spinella/The Day

In response to the expansion of absentee voting provisions, municipal clerks in the region are dealing with an unprecedented amount of ballots and ballot applications this election cycle. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced town and city election officials to alter how they normally do business. Norwich Republican Registrar Dianne Slopak, for example, said the city has 10 people set up to count votes, though there are normally six to eight, depending on the election. She and other registrars have said they’re bracing for a delay in final election results. “We have no idea how long this will take,” Slopak said. “By law, we’re supposed to have preliminary results by midnight of the same day — that’s kind of crazy when you think about it. Registrars start working at 4 in the morning. You can imagine what condition we’re in by midnight. Ballot counters will be starting at about 10 in the morning.” Waterford Clerk David Campo, Groton Town Clerk Betsy Moukawsher, Montville Clerk Katie Sandberg and Slopak offered illustrative examples. In Waterford’s 2019 municipal election, 248 absentee ballots were issued. In its 2018 state election, 672 were issued. And in its 2018 state primary, 93 were issued. As of July 29, 1,853 were issued for the upcoming Aug. 11 primary alone. The number of absentee ballot requests for the Nov. 3 presidential election are expected to exceed that. 

Michigan: GOP intransigence in Michigan could lead to a chaotic presidential election | Jon Ward/Yahoo News

A top Michigan official warned on Wednesday that, unless the Republican-controlled state Legislature passes a law to speed up the reporting of election results, it would be responsible for a chaotic and destabilizing election this fall. “Continued inaction by lawmakers, when we need their support and partnership now more than ever, will equate to a dereliction of duty,” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said on a conference call with reporters. Benson, a Democrat, is the state’s top election official. She wants current laws changed in order to allow vote counters to be able to open mail-in and absentee ballots at least one day before Election Day. Benson said that if clerks are not enabled to start arranging the ballots for counting before Election Day, this will increase delays in reporting the results. For one thing, she said, “every single one of [the election officials] is already going to be dealing with several other issues” on the day of the election. “That will create a space to enable bad actors to falsely raise questions about the sanctity and security of our elections. That reality has implications not just for our voters but for the entire country,” she said.

Ohio: Elections chief faces two new lawsuits 95 days out from the November general election | Laura Hancock/Cleveland Plain Dealer

Two new lawsuits were filed against Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose on Friday: One by the Ohio Democratic Party to allow online requests for absentee ballots and another by the League of Women Voters of Ohio over the practice of signature-matching when absentee ballots are requested. On Friday, it was 95 days until the Nov. 3 election. Ohio Democratic Party Chair David Pepper noted that this year is more unusual than typical election years. “Given the fact that we’re in a global pandemic and many Ohioans have to remain at home to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, many more voters will be casting absentee ballots this fall,” he said in a Friday morning call with reporters. LaRose, a Republican, criticized the suits as challenging security and trust in elections.

Tennessee: State shifts position on COVID-19 and absentee voting in arguments before Tennessee Supreme Court | Mariah Timms and Joel Ebert/Nashville Tennessean

The question of expanding absentee voting in Tennessee reached the state’s highest court Thursday as the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case. It comes on the last day to request a vote-by-mail ballot for the Aug. 6 primary, although officials have urged voters to act early as post office delivery times increase. An absentee ballot must be in the hands of officials by close of business on election day to count, and they must be submitted by mail. At issue is whether concern over the spread of COVID-19 is a valid excuse to receive an absentee ballot. A lower court ruled that it was and any registered voter could apply to receive a mail-in ballot. As a result, county election commissions have reported record numbers of applications. But the state appealed the decision, and the high court took the case directly. Its ruling will be an “incredibly important case for all Tennesseans,” Chief Justice Jeff Bivins said.

National: Fact checking Barr's claim that it's 'common sense' that foreign countries will counterfeit mail-in ballots | Tara Subramaniam/CNN

As coronavirus continues to spread, bipartisan officials across the country and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have supported mail-in voting as a pandemic-safe option for the upcoming election. Despite having voted by mail himself on previous occasions, President Donald Trump has frequently pushed back on the concept, claiming without evidence that it would lead to widespread voter fraud and a “rigged” election. Asked about the issue in a House Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, Attorney General William Barr said he had “no reason to think” that the upcoming election will be “rigged.” But he did say he believes that “if you have wholesale mail-in voting, it substantially increases the risk of fraud.” During the hearing, Barr was also asked about comments he made last month regarding potential foreign interference in the presidential election via counterfeit ballots. Barr acknowledged he didn’t have evidence foreign countries could successfully sway US elections with counterfeit ballots but claimed it was “common sense” that they would attempt to do so.  Facts First: More Americans than ever are expected to cast mail-in ballots this year. While that certainly presents its own challenges, historically voting by mail has not led to massive voter fraud. And nonpartisan election experts say the possibility of foreign entities printing millions of fraudulent mail-in ballots this November is highly unlikely.

National: The Trump administration's battle over mail-in voting heads to Congress | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

Attorney General William P. Barr held fast to claims that a drastic expansion of mail voting in November could undermine the election amid an often combative hearing with House lawmakers. But he provided no concrete evidence for his assertions there’s a “high risk” mail-in voting will lead to massive fraud, which have been roundly dismissed by election security experts. He said “common sense” guides his concern that U.S. adversaries might flood the election with phony ballots submitted by mail, even though election officials say safeguards such as bar codes and signature verification prevent this. It was the first time a congressional committee scrutinized Barr’s claims in person – and Democrats savaged him, contending that he and the president were spreading conspiracy theories and aiding U.S. enemies. “The FBI and our intelligence services have repeatedly warned that [U.S.] adversaries are actively trying to sow mistrust of our election system and by repeating disinformation about mail-in voting, you and the president are helping them,” said Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.), vice chair of the committee. Barr did break from the president, however, when asked if he believed the election will be rigged. “I have no reason to believe it will be,” Barr said. The mail-voting fight is playing out amid a broader partisan battle over how to run the general election.

National: Treasury agrees to lend Postal Service $10 billion in trade for rivals’ shipping contracts | Jacob Bogage/The Washington Post

The Treasury Department agreed to loan the U.S. Postal Service $10 billion in emergency coronavirus relief funding Wednesday in exchange for proprietary information about the mail service’s most lucrative private-sector contracts. The Postal Service, subject to confidentiality restrictions, will provide Treasury copies of its 10 largest “negotiated service agreements,” or contracts with high-volume third-party shippers such as Amazon, FedEx and UPS, and receive a crucial injection of cash that postal officials say will keep the debt-laden agency solvent for at least another year, according to a copy of the loan’s term sheet obtained by The Washington Post. The Postal Service contracts with private-sector shippers for “last-mile” delivery from distribution centers to consumers’ homes, and it offers those companies small discounts because of the volume of packages they provide. President Trump has derided the agency over those deals, which industry experts say only account for a roughly 5 percent savings. He has called the Postal Service Amazon’s “delivery boy” and falsely claimed the agreements are the reason the agency has struggled financially.

North Carolina: Blind voters are being disenfranchised, lawsuit says, and coronavirus doesn't help | The News & Observer

Blind and visually impaired voters will face discrimination and difficult choices in the 2020 elections, a new lawsuit claims, unless North Carolina acts quickly to improve options for voting by mail. North Carolina has specialized voting machines for people with disabilities who vote at any polling place around the state. But this year, the coronavirus pandemic is expected to lead to a massive increase in voting by mail. And the only option for that is a paper ballot. Having only a paper ballot for mail-in voting, the new lawsuit says, means that unless they want to risk their health to vote in person, blind voters will be forced to not only tell someone else who they’d like to vote for, but also trust that person to actually fill out their ballot. “Ensuring that absentee voting is made accessible for blind voters is particularly important because citizens with disabilities already face many barriers to full and equal participation in the voting process, in contrast with sighted voters,” the lawsuit says.

West Virginia: Secretary of State: All voters eligible to request absentee ballot for November election | Charles Young/WV News | wvnews.com

All West Virginia voters will be able to cite concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic as reason to request an absentee ballot for the November general election, according to Secretary of State Mac Warner. All voters need to do is simply select “Illness, injury or other medical reason which keeps me confined” as the reason for requesting an absentee ballot application from their local county clerk, Warner said. “West Virginia voters should never have to choose between their health and their right to vote,” Warner said. “Just as in the 2020 Primary Election, voters following state and federal authorities’ recommendations to protect their health by remaining home have the option to cast a ballot in person or by absentee ballot.” His office also has developed an online absentee ballot request portal, which will launch Aug. 11 on govotewv.com, Warner said.

Connecticut: House Overwhelmingly Approves No-Excuse Absentee Ballots | Christine Stuart/CTNewsJunkie

Republican lawmakers loudly objected to the ballot boxes Secretary of the State Denise Merrill bought for every town in Connecticut, but only two voted not to expand absentee ballots in the November election. The House voted 144-2 in favor of a bill that allows anyone concerned about going to the polls on election day to vote by absentee ballot. Reps. Whit Betts and Cara Pavalock-D’Amato of Bristol voted against the bill. Republicans argued that they don’t want to suppress the vote in November. “It’s not about voter suppression as I heard before,” Rep. Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, said. “It really is about making sure every vote is counted.” Candelora said the absentee ballot process isn’t as simple when you engage in it. He said many of these absentee ballots are often done incorrectly when they don’t have the ability to ask the town clerk questions.

New Jersey: Trump keeps touting New Jersey fraud case to attack mail voting. Local leaders say he’s not telling the whole story. | Rosalind S. Helderman/The Washington Post

Five days before the citizens of Paterson, N.J., selected new members of their city council in May, a postal employee in a neighboring town spotted something suspicious in a local post office: 347 mail-in ballots, bundled together. The discovery kicked off weeks of tumult in New Jersey’s third-largest city, a densely populated and diverse community. Four men, including a city councilman, have been charged with fraud. Amid the controversy, the county election board disqualified 19 percent of ballots cast in the race. The episode probably would have remained a local dust-up but for the sudden interest of President Trump, who has spent the past several months attacking voting by mail as a practice he says is susceptible to massive fraud. In recent weeks, he has seized on the situation in Paterson as the prime exhibit in the case he is making about why the November election will be “rigged,” as he has repeatedly put it. In a tweet Sunday afternoon in which he misspelled the name of the city, he wrote, “The 2020 Election will be totally rigged if Mail-In Voting is allowed to take place, & everyone knows it. So much time is taken talking about foreign influence, but the same people won’t even discuss Mail-In election corruption. Look at Patterson, N.J. 20% of vote was corrupted!”

New York: A month later, this New York City primary is still a train wreck and a warning to us all | Jada Yuan/The Washington Post

The city’s hottest primary election is the 12th Congressional District. In one corner, you have Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, a pal of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s who has been in Congress since 1993 and was recently elected chair of the House Oversight Committee. In the other is Suraj Patel, a former Obama campaign staffer and attorney who has never held public office and helped run his family’s business constructing and franchising hotels in the Midwest before moving to New York in 2006. Their contest has everything. The Upper East Side. The Lower East Side. A tenacious, white, wealthy 74-year-old Democratic incumbent. A 36-year-old Indian American challenger who has taught at New York University’s business school and aims to be the state’s first South Asian representative in Congress. Just 648 in-person votes are separating them, with 65,000 mail-in ballots still being counted. And an entire district of 718,000 people across three boroughs have no idea who their next representative will be — a full month after Election Day. “It’s been dysfunctional to the extreme,” said Brian Van Nieuwenhoven, treasurer of the Samuel J. Tilden Democratic Club in the district. At the center of this mess is a massive influx of mail-in ballots — 403,000 returned ballots in the city this cycle vs. 23,000 that were returned and determined valid during the 2016 primary — and a system wholly unprepared to process them. It’s not just delayed results that are at issue: In the 12th District and in the primaries across the country, tens of thousands of mail-in ballots were invalidated for technicalities like a missing signature or a missing postmark on the envelope.

Wisconsin: Bipartisan Group To Promote In-Person And Mail-In Voting During Pandemic | Laurel White/Wisconsin Public Radio

A bipartisan coalition of high-level Wisconsin politicians has launched an initiative to educate voters about in-person and mail-in voting during the COVID-19 pandemic. The initiative, VoteSafe WI, supports both in-person voting and absentee voting by mail for the August partisan primary and November general election. Voting by mail has been recently criticized by some Republicans, including President Donald Trump. Wisconsin saw a record number of voters cast mail-in absentee ballots in its April election. About 62 percent of all ballots were cast by mail. Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul and former Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen are leading the group. Van Hollen, who served as Wisconsin’s attorney general from 2007-2015, often focused on efforts to prevent voter fraud while in office. Speaking on a call with reporters Tuesday morning, Van Hollen said there has been a lot of “confusion” about voting by mail in recent years, but he believes the public should have confidence in the system.

Georgia: Anatomy of an Election ‘Meltdown’ in Georgia | Danny Hakim, Reid J. Epstein and Stephanie Saul/The New York Times

Last month, Daryl Marvin got his first taste of voting in Georgia. Mr. Marvin had previously lived in Connecticut, where voting was a brisk process measured in minutes. But on the day of the primary, June 9, he and his wife waited four hours to vote at Park Tavern, an Atlanta restaurant where more than 16,000 voters were consolidated into a single precinct. An electrical engineer by training, Mr. Marvin was baffled by what he saw when he finally got inside: a station with 15 to 20 touch screens on which to vote but only a single scanner to process the printed ballots. “The scanner was the choke point,” he said. “Nobody thought about it, and this is Operations Research 101. It’s not very difficult to figure it out.” Captured in drone footage, beamed across airwaves and internet, the interminable lines at Atlanta polling sites became an instant and indelible omen of voting breakdown in this pandemic-challenged presidential election year. Elections workers described a cascade of failures as they struggled to activate and operate Georgia’s new high-tech voting system. Next came a barrage of partisan blame-throwing: The Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, accused the liberal-leaning Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta, of botching the election, while Democratic leaders saw the fiasco as just the latest episode in Republicans’ yearslong effort to disenfranchise the state’s minority voters. Six weeks later, as the political calendar bends toward November and the presidential campaigns look to Georgia as a possible battleground, the faults in the state’s balky elections system remain largely unresolved. And it has become increasingly clear that what happened in June was a collective collapse.

National: Post office concerns highlighted at Senate hearing on elections amid COVID-19 | Niels Lesniewski/Roll Call

“The post office is a very difficult situation for us right now.” That’s how Rick Stream, a Republican elections official from St. Louis County in Missouri, responded to a question Wednesday at a Senate Rules and Administration Committee hearing about concerns over mail-in and absentee ballots not getting to election officials on time as the U.S. Postal Service faces funding and logistical challenges. Stream said that within his jurisdiction, the percentage of absentee voters jumped from about 10 percent seen in normal circumstances to 45 percent in the most recent election, and he expected that figure to increase with legal mail-in voting in November. “To be honest with you, senator, we have had problems with the post office since I’ve been in this office, for three-and-a-half years,” Stream said in response to a query from Rules Chairman Roy Blunt, R-Mo. Missouri law requires ballots to be received by 7 p.m. on election night in order to be counted, and the state continues to use a complicated system requiring validation from notaries in many cases. “The delivery times are less than optimal for sure,” Stream said. “We have even proposed having one of our employees work in the post office in our local community of St. Ann, to try to speed up the process, but to no avail.”

Alabama: Want to vote absentee in Alabama? COVID-19 will be reason enough through end of year | Brian Lyman/Montgomery Advertiser

Voters concerned about the COVID-19 outbreak will be able to vote absentee in the Aug. 25 municipal elections and the November general election. The move does not affect any other of Alabama’s strict absentee voting requirements, but could significantly expand the number of people eligible to vote before Election Day. It comes after six weeks of rising coronavirus caseloads and a statewide mask order aimed at controlling the outbreak. “Amid coronavirus concerns, it is important to remember that Alabamians who are concerned about contracting or spreading an illness have the opportunity to avoid the polls on Election Day by casting an absentee ballot,” Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill said in a statement. The Secretary of State’s office said voters with COVID-19 concerns can mark a box citing a physical illness or infirmity preventing them from going to the polls when they apply for an absentee ballot. Voters could do the same in the July 14th runoff election. Rep. Tashina Morris, D-Montgomery, one of several Democratic legislators who has pushed for more voting options amid the pandemic, called the decision “a great move,” but said there needed to be additional voting options in the state.

Alaska: Lawsuit says automatically mailing absentee ballot applications only to those 65 and older is unconstitutional | Andrew Kitchenman/Alaska Public Media

A lawsuit over the state’s decision to automatically send absentee ballot applications only to those 65 and older is headed to federal court. The lawsuit alleges that the action unconstitutionally discriminates against younger voters. Anchorage lawyer Scott Kendall filed the lawsuit on behalf of several plaintiffs. “Our lawsuit’s very simple: You want to help people to vote absentee? We applaud it. Help all eligible vote absentee in the same way,” he said. “And don’t discriminate in an unconstitutional fashion.” Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer announced in June that the state would be sending requests to vote by mail to all Alaskans 65 and older. He cited the increased risk that older people face for complications from COVID-19. The lawsuit was filed by the Disability Law Center of Alaska, Native Peoples Action Community Fund, Alaska Public Interest Research Group and two residents. The lawsuit said limiting who automatically receives the applications violates the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says the rights of citizens 18 and older to vote shall not be denied or abridged on account of age. And the lawsuit said that word “abridged” is key — and that it means some voters can’t have a better opportunity to vote than others. Kendall said the age cutoff is arbitrary.