November 3, 2020

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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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

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