Will your vote count?

Post Reports

The Washington Post

Daily News, Politics, News

4.4 • 5.1K Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2020

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What we can learn from a Supreme Court decision on mail-in ballots in Wisconsin. The states where most voters still can’t vote by mail. And why it’s easier to vote from space than from your own home.

On Monday night, the Supreme Court rejected a request to extend Wisconsin’s deadline for counting mail-in ballots. Justice Brett M.Kavanaugh wrote a concurring argument that reporter Philip Bump says is riddled with dubious arguments, including an allegation that late ballots are somehow a suspicious effort to shift the results.

Forget the official deadlines: Experts and campaigns say it's now too late to vote by mail. The latest from Jacob Bogage.

Coronavirus cases are surging again. But in five states, most voters fearful of infection are not allowed to cast ballots by mail. Reporter Arelis Hernández describes the restrictions leaving tens of millions of people with the risky choice of voting in person or not voting at all.

In 2020, casting a ballot from space may be easier than casting one on Earth. Editor Ruby Mellen explains how that could be.

Check out The Washington Post’s How to Vote guide for information on your state.

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In a new three-part documentary, The Washington Post explores a failed response to the coronavirus pandemic that’s left 225,000 Americans dead, despite decades of preparation in Washington. Watch “America’s Pandemic” here: http://wapo.st/pandemic

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the newsroom of the Washington Post, Washington Post is Colby.
0:10.0	Hi, Stephanie McCrements from the Washington Post.
0:13.2	This is Post Reports.
0:14.9	I'm Martin Powers.
0:18.8	It's Tuesday, October 27.
0:22.5	Today, what a Supreme Court decision means for counting mail-in ballots, voting during
0:28.6	a COVID surge and casting a ballot from space.
0:36.0	A Monday night, the Supreme Court threw out a lower court ruling in Wisconsin, which
0:40.3	had allowed for voters to submit their absentee ballots and have them arrive up to six days
0:47.2	after November 3rd in order to be counted.
0:50.5	As long as they were post-marts by November 3rd, the court ruled that those ballots could
0:55.7	be counted, the Supreme Court in a five-three decision on Monday night overturned that and
1:03.4	mandated that all ballots be in hand by the state by election day itself.
1:11.0	So there are a few reasons that Wisconsin in particular is of note Donald Trump won
1:14.7	up by fewer than 30,000 votes.
1:16.6	And last spring during the primaries, the number of absentee ballots which were received
1:20.1	after the election day was in the tens of thousands.
1:22.1	So it's not insignificant that we should see so many votes thrown out in a state that
1:27.2	was at least in 2016 pretty close.
1:30.8	And of course, we've seen a massive surge in absentee voting because the coronavirus
1:33.9	pandemic, which has meant that this is more of an issue now even than it was back to
1:39.0	then.
	...

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