Last week, I wrote a blog item concluding that with the pandemic, voter suppression, and the cynical Trump attack on an already underfunded Postal Service, maybe going all in for postal voting was a mistake.

That was too glib. Mail-in voting works well in many states, and it’s what we have. The challenge is to make it work under awful, unanticipated conditions.

For guidance, I consulted Miles Rapoport, former Connecticut secretary of the state and stalwart Prospect board member, now at Harvard’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance. Miles knows more about this than any six people I know.

For starters, Miles reminds me to differentiate three different challenges:

Making mail-in voting work as well as possible
Optimizing early voting, which is not the same as mail-in voting
Improving Election Day operations

Some of this can be done administratively. Some of it takes legislation. In some (but not all) states controlled by Republicans, enhancing the right to vote will be sabotaged, and then litigated.

Mail-in voting will work better if registered citizens need not send in applications, but simply receive ballots by mail automatically. It will work better with the allocation of more personnel to begin tabulating mail-in ballots as they arrive, and not waiting for Election Day. Authorization of on-site drop boxes for mail ballots can also take the pressure off the Postal Service.

Greater reliance on early voting can alleviate Election Day bottlenecks. With early voting, a citizen can stop by a polling place well before Election Day. Those ballots can be tabulated in advance. Thirty-seven states have early voting, with pre-election windows that range from five days to 25 days.

And Election Day need not be the mess that it has been in the last several elections. That means a lot more poll workers, polling places, and backup systems.

Even with all possible improvements, we can count on snafus, some of them deliberate. My friend Miles, who understands the pitfalls as well as anyone, sent in his application for an absentee ballot for Connecticut’s August 11 primary election on August 2. As of today, it hasn’t arrived.

"What will you do?" I asked him. "Put on a mask and vote," said he.

Many of us may have to do likewise.