No, Your Mail-In Ballot Isn’t Being Tossed in the Trash

I put up a picture of a Trump flag yesterday, so it's only fair that I put up a Biden sign today.Kevin Drum

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Hum de hum:

With absentee ballots flooding election offices nationwide, the officials processing them are tentatively reporting some surprising news: The share of ballots being rejected because of flawed signatures and other errors appears lower — sometimes much lower — than in the past.

Should that trend hold, it could prove significant in an election in which the bulk of absentee voters has been Democratic, and Republicans have fought furiously, in court and on the stump, to discard mail ballots as fraudulent.

Despite all the huffing and puffing from Donald Trump, along with the fear of Republican judges tossing out votes by the bushel basket, guess what? All of the work from Democratic activists, lawyers, and campaign staffers has paid off. Over 100 million people have managed to vote early—a huge record breaker—and mail-in ballots are being accepted at high rates. What’s more, judges are ordering the postal service to prioritize the delivery of ballots over all other first-class mail.

So democracy is working OK for now, and all of our votes to toss Trump on the ash heap of history are being counted. And they’ll continue to be counted until there are no ballots left, no matter how loudly Trump bellows about it. Every last one of them.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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