Threat of stationing immigration agents around voting locations has become a concern as it can be a deterrent to legal residents of color who are concerned they may be harassed by federal agents
The White House refused to rule out following through on the threat of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents being sent out to “surround the polls” when voters cast ballots in this November’s midterm elections as a way of depressing Democratic turnout and boosting chances of Republican victories in the House of Representatives and Senate.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday said she could offer “no guarantee” that ICE personnel would not be stationed at polling sites when Americans are in the process of choosing whether to extend the Republican stranglehold on power at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
She had been asked about former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s recent call for Trump to deploy ICE around election sites on his War Room podcast on Tuesday, just days after Trump himself called for a Republican “takeover” of vote-counting in Democratic-led states and municipalities.
Let everyone you know that mail-in ballots are still an option… but bring the ballot to the post office IN PERSON, and ask the postal staff to date-stamp it IN FRONT OF YOU. As I read it, that works around the recent regulation change that allows un-attended post to be stamped when it’s delivered instead of when it’s first dropped off.
That’s effectively what’s happening.
The USPS, under DeJoy (who has long been trying to undermine the USPS from within), has this site, which attempts to debunk (gaslight) over what the change is. They claim the same process applies, but that’s false since now postmarks will use the process rather than the sending date. This is key:
This is entirely to help support GOP legal challenges that will claim that laws that allow a valid election postmark date mail-in ballot to be counted can be struck down, because they will encompass votes that took place after election day, and therefore selectively invalidate mail-in ballots.
Here’s a PBS story about it as well. It also notes that the staffing crunches at the USPS and closing processing facilities will exacerbate the issue since “processing” times will increase, especially for high-volume days like election day.
Bloody hell, why aren’t the Democrats doing everything they can to kick DeJoy out?? What a travesty.
Well, I double-checked and nevermind, DeJoy was out in July of 2025. The new guy is David Steiner, who I suppose the dates make responsible for this.
in california at least you can still bring your absentee ballot to your polling location to drop off. mine is open a week ahead of time, they got someone sitting there with a ballot box.
I live in WA and just drop them off at the county provided ballot boxes, no post office required. There are more of the drop boxes than post offices too.
Yes however I can attest that some states make it easier than others to do mail-in. For example: WA, automatic mail-in, no questions asked. NC, you need to request it, then have your voting observed and certified by either two witnesses or a notary. Every step of the way highly encourages using your driver’s license number or including a copy, otherwise you have to complete more paperwork. THEN you have to take it to the post office to get marked etc. You also go on a list of absentee voters after it is tallied — a nice little target. I used to do it out of spite until it was just too inconvenient compared to early voting.