Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. There's been a lot going on with
Speaker 1: the US Postal Service. In May, a new Postmaster General
Speaker 1: came into office, a businessman named Louis Dejoi, who is
Speaker 1: a big donor to the Trump campaign. After taking office,
Speaker 1: Dejoi instituted several cost cutting measures, like eliminating overtime pay
Speaker 1: for some workers, shortening post office hours, and other proposals
Speaker 1: that the Post Office said had long been under consideration.
Speaker 1: These changes and others led to concerns that the Post
Speaker 1: Office would not be equipped to handle an election in
Speaker 1: the middle of a pandemic because many more people than
Speaker 1: usual would be voting by mail. Many observers thought these
Speaker 1: changes were politically motivated, since Democrats might be more likely
Speaker 1: to vote by mail than Republicans. Now, DeJoy says these
Speaker 1: changes and others will be suspended until after the election.
Speaker 1: Here to help us make sense of all of this,
Speaker 1: how worried we should be and what really has been
Speaker 1: going on is Elaine Kamark. She's the director of the
Speaker 1: Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings institution. She's
Speaker 1: been studying the post Office for years. She worked in
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton's White House on the Reinventing Government initiative, and
Speaker 1: for many years has been a participant in democratic politics.
Speaker 1: We spoke on Monday morning, Elaine, Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining us. I wonder if we could start with,
Speaker 1: to use an old fashioned expression, the facts which are
Speaker 1: not always prominent in our current moment of panic about
Speaker 1: the US Postal Service. So I want to start by
Speaker 1: going back before Louis Dejoi took over, and before he
Speaker 1: became the focal point of concerns about what's happening to
Speaker 1: the Postal Service? Where did this all start? In your view, Ironically,
Speaker 1: even though it's so much in the news now, this
Speaker 1: is a very very old story. I mean this is
Speaker 1: literally decades old, because the Post Office first started to
Speaker 1: get in trouble at the turn of the century, as
Speaker 1: first class mails began to disappear. The big, big hit
Speaker 1: to first class mail was when we stopped mailing in
Speaker 1: our bills and started paying our bills online, and that
Speaker 1: really decimated first class mail. And that was the post
Speaker 1: Office's highest return. I mean, that was this most profitable
Speaker 1: and the post Office has been forbidden for many years
Speaker 1: from really going into entrepreneurial activities. To make a long
Speaker 1: story short, let me say that the Post Office has
Speaker 1: been in trouble for two decades. It has needed to
Speaker 1: adjust us to the new world where we have much,
Speaker 1: much less mail, and both political parties have been really
Speaker 1: reluctant to do anything about the Post Office. And so
Speaker 1: this comes kind of as a for those of us
Speaker 1: who have studied the post Office for a long time.
Speaker 1: This is kind of like, oh my god, the whole
Speaker 1: world is suddenly discovering what the crisis is at the
Speaker 1: post Office. I want to ask you a follow up
Speaker 1: question to that before we dive into this summer's controversy,
Speaker 1: and it's this, I'm always confused, as someone who's interested
Speaker 1: in government but not a post office expert, by what
Speaker 1: seemed like two contradictory strands in the kind of discussion
Speaker 1: that you were just briefly describing. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: we hear the post office being treated like a business.
Speaker 1: It's losing money, it's not making a profit. It's lost
Speaker 1: it's customers. You know, it's a money loser for the government.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, we have this counter narrative that
Speaker 1: the post Office is a public service, a public good.
Speaker 1: We shouldn't even be thinking about it from this perspective
Speaker 1: as a competitor or as a business because it's there
Speaker 1: to deliver the mail through wind and snow and sleet
Speaker 1: and hail and to get it to everybody, none of
Speaker 1: which is designed to make money. So help me out here.
Speaker 1: You know which way should we be thinking about the
Speaker 1: post Office? Well, in two ways. First of all, the
Speaker 1: post Office is in the constitution. Okay, it's the only
Speaker 1: public agency in the constitution, and it is very important
Speaker 1: for the purpose of binding the country together. So the
Speaker 1: most important public aspect of the post Office is universal service.
Speaker 1: Is the universal service pledge that basically, no matter how
Speaker 1: far down the road you live in rural Montana, you
Speaker 1: can get something from the post office. So that's the
Speaker 1: rock bottom public service. Now, the question then gets a
Speaker 1: little bit blurry when you get to the business side, right,
Speaker 1: because the question is can post office maintain universal public
Speaker 1: service and not lose as much money? I think they can.
Speaker 1: There's going to have to be adjustments in service down
Speaker 1: the line. Now, the Post Office itself has been closing
Speaker 1: sorting facilities, they've been changing things up, they move mailboxes
Speaker 1: all the time, by the way. Okay, so that's a
Speaker 1: little bit of a paranoia that's out there. People who
Speaker 1: have been sendating pictures of mailboxes on trucks. That happens
Speaker 1: all the time. And so there's this ongoing debate about
Speaker 1: how do you maintain universal service and not lose as
Speaker 1: much money. Nobody, I think in the Congress Oran government
Speaker 1: expects the post Office to make money. But the question
Speaker 1: is they have been losing loads and loads of money,
Speaker 1: and how can you do these two things? And it's
Speaker 1: quite difficult. But one of the things discussed all the time,
Speaker 1: for instance, ending Saturday service. We all are used to
Speaker 1: get email on Saturday and just not on Sunday. The
Speaker 1: question is could we end Saturday service? And that's one
Speaker 1: of the things that's out there, and then there's a
Speaker 1: lot of other ideas out there. I can't resist mentioning,
Speaker 1: by the way, that the one time in my own
Speaker 1: academic work that I ever came across a big fight
Speaker 1: about the post office was in the early nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: so almost exactly two hundred years ago, when there was
Speaker 1: a huge fight about Sunday service. It turns out the
Speaker 1: post office used to deliver the mail on Sunday. And
Speaker 1: this became a controversy because the more secular oriented, questionable
Speaker 1: blasphemer types in small towns like to hang out in
Speaker 1: the post office. Because in a lot of places in
Speaker 1: the United States, especially in new places, the only public
Speaker 1: place to congregate that wasn't church was the post office.
Speaker 1: And ministers were really upset that there was a sort
Speaker 1: of competing venue on Sunday mornings, and they started a
Speaker 1: national movement to shut down Sunday service, and they actually
Speaker 1: succeeded astonishingly, which is sort of unbelievable. And their speeches
Speaker 1: in Congress by a congressman making the first important argument
Speaker 1: for the separation of church and state ever made in Congress,
Speaker 1: somebody saying, well, we're not a Christian country, really, so
Speaker 1: therefore we should continue to have service on Sunding. Other
Speaker 1: people saying, what are you talking about. You know, this
Speaker 1: is a terrible blasphemy. Anyway, it's a genuine digression. But
Speaker 1: sometimes on deep background we digress a little bit. That's
Speaker 1: that's terrific. I want to turn now to this summer,
Speaker 1: coming all the way up to the present, and early
Speaker 1: in the summer, the Post Office was talking about cost
Speaker 1: cutting that was already beginning to delay mail delivery by
Speaker 1: up to a week in some places. And it also
Speaker 1: was saying that it was going to decommission ten percent
Speaker 1: of the sorting machines that it uses. Were these things,
Speaker 1: in your view, continuous with the kinds of reform that
Speaker 1: happens all the time, sort of like moving around the
Speaker 1: post office boxes on a big scale, or were these
Speaker 1: things already part of some possibly coordinated plan to slow
Speaker 1: down mail in advance of the upcoming pandemic election. Well,
Speaker 1: the Post Office says these were continuous, and the Democrats
Speaker 1: think that this was part of a plan. Here's the
Speaker 1: way I would answer that if Donald Trump had not
Speaker 1: made a huge deal and a huge attack on mail
Speaker 1: in ballots, my guess is this would have passed relatively unnoticed.
Speaker 1: But Donald Trump, at about the same time began railing
Speaker 1: against mail in ballots and encouraging people not to use
Speaker 1: them and saying that these systems were corrupt, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, there is not a shred of evidence too.
Speaker 1: And so it was the conjunction of some of these
Speaker 1: cuts and some of these cost savings, some of which
Speaker 1: would have been probably business as usual, and Donald Trump
Speaker 1: railing against mail in ballots. That made everybody say, hey,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, is he trying to suppress the vote?
Speaker 1: Is he trying to keep people from voting? Now, he's
Speaker 1: been all over the place on this. Trump has, but
Speaker 1: he seems to be particularly geared up against mail in
Speaker 1: ballots in the states that are universal mail in ballots
Speaker 1: as opposed to absentee ballots. But the fact of the
Speaker 1: matter is that any slowdown in the mail in election
Speaker 1: season would in fact affect ballots. Even though the Post
Speaker 1: Office has always treated ballots this is interesting. They've always
Speaker 1: treated ballots as first class mail, as privileged mail, regardless
Speaker 1: of no stamp, what kind of stamp, bulk mail, whatever,
Speaker 1: It's always been treated as privileged mail. Many fascinating things,
Speaker 1: and what you just said, let me start with a
Speaker 1: small one and then moved to the bigger one. The
Speaker 1: small one about the Post Office traditionally treating your ballot
Speaker 1: as first class mail even if you didn't put first
Speaker 1: class postage on it. CNN reports that there were plans
Speaker 1: in place, or at least documents in the Post Office
Speaker 1: being produced over the course of the summer that said,
Speaker 1: let's change that policy and let's only deliver ballots as
Speaker 1: first class may if they have first class postage. The
Speaker 1: Post Office says those weren't official policy documents. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what they mean by that, and Louis Dejoi has said,
Speaker 1: don't worry, we're not going to make that change. What
Speaker 1: do you think about that particular small debate. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's so small. I mean, I think that is
Speaker 1: one piece of evidence that Louie de joy was getting
Speaker 1: White House pressure on this issue. I've been in a
Speaker 1: White House, and the way it works is the President
Speaker 1: doesn't always have to say to the postmaster general, hey,
Speaker 1: you should stop treating ballots as first class mail. But
Speaker 1: if the president is spending week after week tweeting about
Speaker 1: the disastrous things that will happen if we have an
Speaker 1: election by mail, a postmaster general might say, hey, this
Speaker 1: is a good policy. We can stop this and please
Speaker 1: the White House. And they got caught, pure and simple,
Speaker 1: they got caught in something that they should have never
Speaker 1: ever considered, never considered doing this. I mean, it goes
Speaker 1: so far back that postal workers have been known to
Speaker 1: buy hand take ballots out of the sorting process in
Speaker 1: order to make sure that they were delivered first class.
Speaker 1: And delivered immediately. So this is a long tradition with
Speaker 1: the post office. It's important to democracy. The postal workers
Speaker 1: see their mission as doing this and look, they got caught.
Speaker 1: That's what happened. This is particularly fascinating at the big
Speaker 1: picture level because the detail then leads to the big impact.
Speaker 1: If I'm hearing you correctly, and tell me if I am,
Speaker 1: this is a kind of signature Trump move. He doesn't
Speaker 1: know the details. He starts out with a public attack
Speaker 1: on mail and balloting because he doesn't like it, and
Speaker 1: also because he's trying to discourage and confuse people from
Speaker 1: using it. Then he puts in place a postmaster general.
Speaker 1: He can't do it directly because of the way the
Speaker 1: post Office is set up, but via his appointees, he
Speaker 1: indirectly is able to influence the appointment of a Postmaster
Speaker 1: General who actually starts flirting in a serious way with
Speaker 1: changes that actually would potentially affect delivery of the mail.
Speaker 1: And although we don't know, I take it. How many
Speaker 1: ballots in the past have been submitted with less than
Speaker 1: a first class postage and got en treated as having postage.
Speaker 1: It's a kind of change to the culture, is what
Speaker 1: you're saying there's a kind of cultural norm in the
Speaker 1: Post Office that one of our jobs, in terms of
Speaker 1: delivering a public service is to get people's ballots in.
Speaker 1: That just seems really, really important as a civic matter.
Speaker 1: And here you have Post Office officials talking not openly
Speaker 1: but within the Post Office about just not doing that,
Speaker 1: thereby sending the message that are kind of on board
Speaker 1: with the president, and then they get caught, as you say,
Speaker 1: and then this adds up to a huge public worry
Speaker 1: and concern and debate, which maybe what Trump wanted in
Speaker 1: the first place. This is par for the course for
Speaker 1: his presidency. He says things based on no knowledge, he
Speaker 1: gets them in motion, and then time after time we
Speaker 1: see his appointees and his aids scurrying around to try
Speaker 1: to make it actually happen, and then we see blowing
Speaker 1: up in his face. I mean, one of the ironies
Speaker 1: of this is that if you try to assess rational
Speaker 1: thinking to the president, it just does work. And let
Speaker 1: me give you the clearest example. The five states that
Speaker 1: have mail in ballots and have used them for quite
Speaker 1: some time are Oregon solidly democratic, Washington solidly democratic, California
Speaker 1: solidly democratic, Hawaii, the District of Columbia solidly Democratic. Then
Speaker 1: you have Colorado, which is potentially a swing state, and Utah,
Speaker 1: which is a Republican state. Now, if Donald Trump thinks
Speaker 1: that he can argue that the election was stolen from
Speaker 1: him because without mail ballots he would have won California,
Speaker 1: that is preposterous on the face of it. And nobody's
Speaker 1: going to believe it. I mean, they'll just laugh him.
Speaker 1: But I don't even think he'll get to court on
Speaker 1: that one. But he's clearly trying to set up an
Speaker 1: excuse for why he's not going to win. And this
Speaker 1: makes no sense, right, It just makes no sense whatsoever,
Speaker 1: as are so many of Donald Trump's purported policy moves.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment. One of the things
Speaker 1: that most upset me in the Post Office story over
Speaker 1: the summer was the report in the Washington Post that
Speaker 1: at the end of July, the General Counsel and Executive
Speaker 1: Vice President of the Post Office, Thomas Marshall, sent letters
Speaker 1: to forty six states and the District of Columbia basically saying,
Speaker 1: we're not at all shore. In fact, we doubt that
Speaker 1: we can get mail in ballots too you in time
Speaker 1: for you to count them in relation to the election. Now,
Speaker 1: this was done privately, so this we can't attribute to
Speaker 1: a Trumpian plan, or I can't attribute to a Trumpian
Speaker 1: plan to try to influence public opinion because they did
Speaker 1: it quietly, and in fact, it took some doing on
Speaker 1: the part of the newspaper to get the story out.
Speaker 1: What's your interpretation of what was going on with this letter?
Speaker 1: Were they making a record in advance in case things
Speaker 1: went wrong later? What's your read You spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time inside of government. You know exactly about the
Speaker 1: different motivations, including the Cya motivations that are there in
Speaker 1: play for a letter like this. Well, I think it's
Speaker 1: a Cya motivation for sure. But I think that the
Speaker 1: thing about coming November is that we had all these
Speaker 1: primaries happening in twenty twenty, and the primaries taught the
Speaker 1: states important things about what's going to happen in November.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that happened is absentee ballot.
Speaker 1: The ballots didn't arrive on time. A lot of ballots
Speaker 1: came in after election day because the mail was slow.
Speaker 1: What states have done in response to this, in other words,
Speaker 1: the Post Office said we may not be able to
Speaker 1: get these in in time for you to count. Well.
Speaker 1: At my last count, there were somewhere in the neighborhood
Speaker 1: of twenty five states about half the states that they
Speaker 1: actually have either laws or administrative regulations on the books
Speaker 1: saying that they will count ballots up to five days
Speaker 1: after election day and in some states up to ten
Speaker 1: days after election day. So as long as people are
Speaker 1: putting their ballot in the mail on election day, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of states that are going to count
Speaker 1: your ballot, even if the mail is slow, and even
Speaker 1: if it takes a while to get there. And I
Speaker 1: think that that's been a reaction to that letter, to
Speaker 1: the possibility that the mail will be slow. It's also
Speaker 1: a reaction to the fact that states are going to
Speaker 1: take longer to account the vote. Will not know the
Speaker 1: outcome of many elections on election night in November, because
Speaker 1: first of all, we will only have exi polling from
Speaker 1: the people who vote in person, and that looks like
Speaker 1: that's going to be a heavily Republican vote. In some states,
Speaker 1: the exipole people will be able to sample absentee ballot
Speaker 1: voters in the states that have that data. In other states,
Speaker 1: they won't be able to do that at all. And
Speaker 1: of course if things are close, we really may not
Speaker 1: know for days or weeks. Who want a given state. Now,
Speaker 1: if it's a landslide for Biden or for Trump, then
Speaker 1: in fact, they'll probably know pretty well on election night
Speaker 1: or certainly the day after. But we have to get
Speaker 1: ready for the fact that if you want an honest vote,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to wait for all the votes to
Speaker 1: be counted. And it's not just the ballots arriving late
Speaker 1: in the mail. It's also the fact that the states
Speaker 1: have never counted this many absentee ballots before, so they're
Speaker 1: having to buy new scanners, they're having to increase their
Speaker 1: staff for the counting procedure, etc. And so the election
Speaker 1: night will not be what we're used to. That brings
Speaker 1: us to what I would maybe not call the nightmare scenario,
Speaker 1: but definitely they lose a lot of sleepover its scenario.
Speaker 1: So in this scenario, there are crucial swing states where
Speaker 1: Donald Trump says late at night on election night or
Speaker 1: even the next day, look, I won those states because
Speaker 1: they've counted the ballots that they've got, They've counted the
Speaker 1: people who voted and their exit polls, and they all
Speaker 1: show me winning those states because, as you mentioned, Republicans seem,
Speaker 1: at least based on current polling data, more likely to
Speaker 1: be willing to brave the dangers of COVID and show
Speaker 1: up at the polls. Meanwhile, Joe Biden is saying, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, there are still lots of votes in these
Speaker 1: swing states that are crucial to the outcome of the
Speaker 1: election that haven't been counted yet, and it's going to
Speaker 1: take Awhile, then we get legal battles in these individual states,
Speaker 1: with Trump lawyers saying, don't count these ballots for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: and Biden lawyers saying count them. And if I sound
Speaker 1: a little traumatized in describing this, it's because I was
Speaker 1: as a young lawyer in Palm Beach County in two
Speaker 1: thousand litigating on behalf of al Gore. And then that
Speaker 1: becomes a real genuine mess, which opens the door for
Speaker 1: the election to be thrown into the courts or otherwise
Speaker 1: seriously questioned. How probable is it that they will really
Speaker 1: be uncounted votes within the margin of victory for Joe
Speaker 1: Biden that are really still uncounted. Well, it's hard to say,
Speaker 1: but a lot of this is going to depend actually
Speaker 1: on the networks, because if the networks rush to judgment,
Speaker 1: they will add to the sense of chaos and uncertainty
Speaker 1: and really strengthen hand of Trump and the people who
Speaker 1: want confusion in this. So the networks need to be
Speaker 1: super super super cautious, and frankly, a lot of this
Speaker 1: is going to depend on what Fox News does. If
Speaker 1: Fox News plays along with the President, then they will
Speaker 1: call his victory way too early, way long before they should,
Speaker 1: and without regard to the other networks and the data
Speaker 1: coming in, and then you can have a mess. If
Speaker 1: Fox News behaves itself and acts like the other networks
Speaker 1: in terms of waiting for exapole data, absentee ballot sampling
Speaker 1: data and then actual key votes and key precincts to
Speaker 1: be reported and then make their call, then my guess
Speaker 1: is that Trump will file suit, but it will not
Speaker 1: have the same impact. So the player here that's kind
Speaker 1: of most crucial is in fact they are in fact networks.
Speaker 1: What is your biggest worry about the mechanics of this
Speaker 1: coming election? Of the panoply of dangers that you've mentioned
Speaker 1: for the universal mail in ballot states and we're up
Speaker 1: to nine now, interesting enough. In spite of the president's rantings,
Speaker 1: more states since he began talking about this, have adopted
Speaker 1: universal mail in ballots. In the universal mail in ballot states,
Speaker 1: I think the system will go fairly smoothly. There's only
Speaker 1: one step to take the ballot that's mailed to registered voters.
Speaker 1: The registered voter mails it back. As we've seen, the
Speaker 1: volume of mail an extra mail expected on election day
Speaker 1: in an election week is a fraction of the volume
Speaker 1: of mail that the Post office handles at Christmas. Okay,
Speaker 1: So this whole business about being overwhelmed by ballots, it's
Speaker 1: just nonsense. I mean, the Post Office can in fact
Speaker 1: take care of the ballots in those states. I think
Speaker 1: it will go fairly smoothly. I think there will be
Speaker 1: other states where the absentee ballot process will get screwed
Speaker 1: up and people won't get their ballots. And we saw
Speaker 1: that happen in the primaries. And then here's the catch,
Speaker 1: and here's where here's my biggest worry. My biggest worry
Speaker 1: is that states will see a huge volume of absentee
Speaker 1: ballot requests because the mail is slow, or because people
Speaker 1: they get their mail, but then they lose their ballot etc.
Speaker 1: A lot of those people will end up going to
Speaker 1: the polls on election day. But the States, and they
Speaker 1: did this in the primaries. The States said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: look at all these people voting apps and tee, we
Speaker 1: only need to open one polling place or two polling places.
Speaker 1: And I think what they are going to have to do,
Speaker 1: and we're urging them to do this, open as many
Speaker 1: polling places as they can, because that's the fail safe.
Speaker 1: If you ask for your absentee ballot application, you didn't
Speaker 1: get it, then okay, election day comes, you can go
Speaker 1: to a polling place. And what we saw happen in
Speaker 1: the primaries was states that tried sending out ballots for
Speaker 1: the first time to everybody, or states that sent out
Speaker 1: absentee ballots some of them just didn't arrive, or maybe
Speaker 1: they arrived and people lost them or whatever. You need
Speaker 1: to have polling places open. Whenever government is in a
Speaker 1: transition between one system and another, they have to do
Speaker 1: something which seems really inefficient in the short run. They
Speaker 1: have to keep both systems up and running. Now, a
Speaker 1: business would hate this because it's so redundant, but government
Speaker 1: is not business. Eventually, people are going to figure out,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, voting by mail is much more convenient. Those trends,
Speaker 1: by the way, we're happening long before COVID. We had
Speaker 1: a steady trend up in voting by mail beginning in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six, was steadily increasing. So it was happening anyway.
Speaker 1: But you cannot rush to close down the polling places
Speaker 1: because that's the fail safe in the system. Elaine, thank
Speaker 1: you very much for your clear eyed, clear thinking analysis
Speaker 1: of these tough issues and for helping us get behind
Speaker 1: the headlines into the meet and substance of the challenges
Speaker 1: that we're facing in the election regarding the Post Office
Speaker 1: and all the other challenges that we're facing at the moment.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Thank you, Noah, take care. Listening
Speaker 1: to Elaine Kmark helped me understand both how we may
Speaker 1: have gotten to the past that we're at and also
Speaker 1: what may be about to happen on election day and
Speaker 1: the days that follow. First, there's a Lane's account according
Speaker 1: to which potential changes in the Post Office that may
Speaker 1: not on their own necessarily have been nefarious were put
Speaker 1: into the public eye and received a lot of scrutiny
Speaker 1: because Donald Trump was simultaneously making arguments about the dangers
Speaker 1: and potential failures of mail in voting. Then the Post
Speaker 1: Office got caught in the Lane's phrase, considering some proposals
Speaker 1: that might actually have changed the way at least some
Speaker 1: mail in ballots are sent in. The upshot was to
Speaker 1: create a degree of uncertainty around the election. Elaine believes
Speaker 1: that Trump was not being rational. I think it's at
Speaker 1: least possible that Trump was being rational in the only
Speaker 1: way he knows how. That is to say, feeling out circumstances,
Speaker 1: trying to create uncertainty and hoping that at the margin
Speaker 1: that would actually lead some people who are unsure about
Speaker 1: whether they should turn out to vote or not unsure
Speaker 1: about whether to send in their ballots, to stay home,
Speaker 1: or to fail to send in their ballots on election day.
Speaker 1: To my mind, that's not entirely irrational, although it certainly
Speaker 1: may be nefarious. The upshot is that this is a
Speaker 1: classic Trump strategy of trying to muddy the waters de
Speaker 1: legitimate government, and through that delegitimation, gains some advantage in
Speaker 1: the upcoming election. What matters for election day, Elaine points out,
Speaker 1: is that we have to begin to take on board
Speaker 1: a reality that we simply may not know who's won
Speaker 1: the election when we go to bed the night of
Speaker 1: the election, or even the day after, or even for
Speaker 1: several days thereafter. If Republicans turn out to vote at
Speaker 1: the polls in larger numbers, while Democrats are disproportionately likely
Speaker 1: to mail in ballots, it may simply take a while,
Speaker 1: especially in swing states, for us to know who won
Speaker 1: the election, unless one of the two sides wins in
Speaker 1: a landslide. We need, therefore, to begin telling ourselves and
Speaker 1: telling everybody we know, that this election may in fact
Speaker 1: not be over on that day, to avoid a scenario
Speaker 1: where Donald Trump makes an effort to claim to have
Speaker 1: won the election when he has not in fact won it.
Speaker 1: At that point in time, I left my convert station
Speaker 1: with Elaine a little less worried about whether the Post
Speaker 1: Office will actually deliver people's ballots. I'm modestly convinced by
Speaker 1: what she has to say that it probably will in practice,
Speaker 1: but more worried than I was before about what might
Speaker 1: happen if we get differential numbers of Republicans and Democrats
Speaker 1: actually showing up at the polls on election day as
Speaker 1: opposed to mailing in their ballots. Here at deep background,
Speaker 1: will continue to watch this issue closely, and if there
Speaker 1: are more developments on it before the election, we will
Speaker 1: come back to you with them. No matter how you
Speaker 1: cut it, voting in a pandemic is going to be
Speaker 1: a little weird until the next time I speak to you.
Speaker 1: Be careful, be safe, and be well. Deep background is
Speaker 1: brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our producer is Lydia
Speaker 1: gene Coott, with mastering by Martin Gonzalez. Our showrunner is
Speaker 1: Sophia mckibbon. Our theme music is composed by Luis Guerra.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to the Pushkin Brass, Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 1: and Mia Loebell. I'm Noah Feldman to write a regular
Speaker 1: column for Bloomberg Opinion, which you can find at Bloomberg
Speaker 1: dot com slash Feldman. To discover Bloomberg's original slate of podcasts,
Speaker 1: go to Bloomberg dot com slash Podcasts. And one last thing,
Speaker 1: I just wrote a book called The Arab Winter, a Tragedy.
Speaker 1: I would be delighted if you checked it out. If
Speaker 1: you liked what you heard today, please write a review
Speaker 1: or tell a friend. You can always let me know
Speaker 1: what you think on Twitter my handle is Noah R. Feldman.
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