From the AP:
A U.S. judge on Thursday blocked controversial Postal Service changes that have slowed mail nationwide, calling them “a politically motivated attack on the efficiency of the Postal Service” before the November election.
Judge Stanley Bastian in Yakima, Washington, said he was issuing a nationwide preliminary injunction sought by 14 states that sued the Trump administration and the U.S. Postal Service.
And:
The judge noted after a hearing that Trump had repeatedly attacked voting by mail by making unfounded claims that it is rife with fraud. Many more voters are expected to vote by mail this November because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the states have expressed concern that delays might result in voters not receiving ballots or registration forms in time.
“The states have demonstrated the defendants are involved in a politically motivated attack on the efficiency of the Postal Service,” Bastian said.
He also said the changes created “a substantial possibility many voters will be disenfranchised.”
BTW, the "defendants" here are Donald Trump and Louis DeJoy, Postmaster General.
You can read the order here.
From the Judge's analysis:
Although not necessarily apparent on the surface, at the heart of DeJoy’s and the Postal Service’s actions is voter disenfranchisement. This is evident in President Trump’s highly partisan words and tweets, the actual impact of the changes on primary elections that resulted in uncounted ballots, and recent attempts and lawsuits by the Republican National Committee and President Trump’s campaign to stop the States’ efforts to bypass the Postal Service by utilizing ballot drop boxes, as well as the timing of the changes.It is easy to conclude that the recent Postal Services’ changes is an intentional effort on the part the current Administration to disrupt and challenge the legitimacy of upcoming local, state,and federal elections, especially given that 72% of the decommissioned high speed mail sorting machines that were decommissioned were located in counties where Hillary Clinton receive the most votes in 2016.
And this happened in Pennsylvania:
Pennsylvania's Supreme Court extended the due date for mail ballots in the November election, a decision that will likely result in more votes being counted in the state — and more time to determine the final results.
Mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania have previously been due by the time polls close on Election Day. But the court's order adds a three-day extension to receive ballots that are postmarked by 8 p.m. on Election Day. Ballots with a preelection postmark will now be counted as long as they are received by 5 p.m. on Nov. 6, three days after the polls close.
The court also wrote that ballots "received within this period that lack a postmark or other proof of mailing, or for which the postmark or other proof of mailing is illegible, will be presumed to have been mailed by Election Day unless a preponderance of the evidence demonstrates that it was mailed after Election Day."
Of course, to our good friends in the GOP, this was an assault on democracy and the rule of law itself.
Today’s blatantly political decision to violate the law irresponsibly heightens the risk that our state will experience a lengthy, disputed, and controversial outcome in what is expected to be an extremely close presidential race.
— Senator Pat Toomey (@SenToomey) September 17, 2020
The idea of having more citizens voting has always been anathema to the GOP - they only want the right voters voting (see what I did there?).
