59 days.
Fifty-nine days until November 3rd, and I know how it sounds to say this is the most important election of our lives, because we say it every time. But we keep saying it because it keeps being true, and we all know what the stakes are, and so does the Trump regime, which is why they are pulling out all the stops, to try and stop us.
What the Supreme Court actually did
The Court handed Trump another win on vote by mail. Here's the honest read on it: the ruling that let his executive order move forward was decided on a procedural technicality, essentially that the challenge came too early, before the Postal Service had a chance to implement anything. It was a thin argument. There is still a second case blocking implementation, and the states, not the president, retain the authority to run their own elections. None of this forces a state to do anything.
That's the reassuring part. Here's the part that should have your attention. A whistleblower has gone to the Senate Judiciary Committee describing Trump loyalists inside the Postal Service moving ahead with his directives in defiance of a court order, and doing what the whistleblower called catastrophic damage to the Postal Service itself. Federalizing vote by mail, pulling voter lists, instructing the post office to check the rolls before ballots go out. That is the plan. They are trying to execute it.
They have not rigged this election but what they are doing is injecting chaos, because chaos makes people give up before a single vote is counted. As Robert Hubbell puts it, there is plenty of reason for hope and no reason at all for complacency. Our job is to see through the chaos and keep our footing. Focus is power.
Worth remembering, too: it is not at all a foregone conclusion that gutting vote by mail hurts us more than them. Think about who votes by mail in rural America. There is a real scenario where the red states that rush to please this regime throw their own elections into chaos and disenfranchise more Republicans than Democrats. And there is one thing Americans of every political stripe cannot stand, which is being silenced. Ask Georgia how that worked out. They suppressed the vote as aggressively as anyone in the country and ended up sending two Democrats to the Senate.
Your ballot plan, and everyone else's
This is the consensus recommendation from thought leaders across the left:
Vote in person, early, if you can. That is the number one thing.
If you can't do that, put your mail ballot in an official drop box or vote center.
If you can't do that, mail it as early as humanly possible. Do not wait.
If your ballot never shows up in the mail, go to your polling place and vote in person anyway.
Voting in person on Election Day is the last resort, not the plan.
It's more important than ever to know that this is a voter education election. Most people have no idea any of this is happening. So we have to tell them, over and over, in every group chat and every family thread and every volunteer shift. Indivisible is rolling out their Hands Off Our Vote resources and trainings nationwide.
I spent a lot of August with members of Congress at Blue Wave Nation events during recess, and it gave me hope. They are taking this seriously, they're preparing the legal challenges, and they're saying the same thing we are: vote early, don't wait. Representative Dave Min, who I did an event with in Corona del Mar last Sunday, has been doing serious work studying authoritarianism and guarding the machinery of our democracy. They are not in power right now but they are not sitting still either.
