Lightning Round: Louis DeJoy Still Runs the USPS, PA Gets Even Dumber, and More

Small changes to voting rules and procedures can have a major impact on election results.

In 2022, almost 30 U.S. House races were decided by fewer than 10,000 votes, which is about the same margin President Biden won both Georgia and Arizona by in 2020.

That means even small, local battles over who is allowed to vote or which ballots are allowed to count can actually make the difference between a Democratic vs. Republican Speaker of the House or swing dozens of Electoral College votes.

Here are a few of the small—but enormously important—stories from this week that could impact the outcome of this year’s elections:

• US Postmaster General Louis DeJoy—a former Trump donor and Republican Party official—announced a “cost savings” measure that will re-route all mail in the Reno, Nevada, area through a processing center in Sacramento. Nevada is a “universal vote by mail” state, which means all voters automatically receive a mail-in ballot as their primary voting method. There’s concern that DeJoy’s cost-cutting measure will cause delays in delivering voters’ mail ballots on time.

• Earlier this month I commented that the “dumbest voting law in America” is a Pennsylvania law that says your mail-in ballot doesn’t count if you don’t fill in the date on the ballot envelope, even though officials don’t use the date to confirm you submitted the ballot before the deadline. Things are only getting worse: now some election officials are rejecting ballots if the voter writes the month and the date but forgets to fill in the year—even though there’s only one year the voter could have possibly completed the ballot.

• Arkansas officials passed an “emergency rule” that says you can’t sign your voter registration application with an electronic signature—you have to sign the form with physical pen and paper. This means voters can no longer register online through civic organizations such as vote.org or by signing the form with their finger on a smartphone or tablet.

• Don’t worry, there’s some good news. In Marion County, Indiana (home of Indianapolis), officials added eight new early voting locations and are offering early voting on weekends for the upcoming primary election. Early voting rules differ from state-to-state. Some states don’t give any leeway to add extra locations or days, so it’s good to see officials like those in Marion offer more options when allowed. Research and experience tell us that (1) shortening the distance a voter has to drive to an early voting location and (2) offering early voting on weekends are significant drivers of voter turnout. (Unfortunately, the research also shows that even when officials do add voting locations, they often fail to add them near underserved areas.)

One thing that encourages me: even with all the big, headline-grabbing stories of the week, there’s still local media coverage of each of these issues. It’s the first time in my career that anyone other than election nerds who work on political campaigns is tuning in to minutia of election administration, and it’s only April. That some cause for hope.