The state had removed mail-in requirements for all voters over 65 originally.
Page B2From§Eachthe wee small hours edition — 31 August 2026
Mail voting under siege: court strikes South Carolina's law, USPS rule threatens to bar millions more
As it ran on the front
Accessible Vote by Mail, an American convenience of uncertain but respectable middle age, cleared administrative death this week, following complications from a federal ruling in South Carolina and a proposed United States Postal Service rule that could bar millions of ballots from ever reaching a mailbox that counts.
It was born sometime in the early twentieth century, out of practical necessity — soldiers overseas, farmers who could not leave the harvest, the elderly who could not stand in line for six hours. It grew up modestly, mostly unremarked upon, mostly bipartisan, until it became, in certain states in certain years, wildly popular, which is usually when a thing in this country starts attracting enemies.…
…(cont) It is survived by absentee ballots still legal in name, by drop boxes standing in parking lots with nothing in particular to do, and by the Michigan candidate who called his state's elections 'ground zero for this republic,' a phrase that will outlive the thing it was spoken about.
It is preceded in death by the assumption that a postmark counts as proof, by the assumption that a signature match is a formality and not a gauntlet, and by South Carolina's own mail-in voting law, found this week to violate the state constitution it was written under.
There will be no viewing. The body, such as it is, has been redistricted.
Mort has covered a great many deaths of this kind — a program here, a norm there — and has stopped being surprised by any of them, though he confesses this one has some genuine reach, given how many millions of people vote this way and how few of them will ever read the rule that stops them. Malarkey has a paper trail. So, it turns out, does disenfranchisement, and the trail runs straight through a federal court docket and a postal regulation nobody elected.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you check your state's mail ballot deadline today, twice, and mail it yourself, early, by hand, to a mailbox you can see.
“They keep saying the election is 'ground zero for the republic' right before they make it harder to mail in a ballot. That's not protecting democracy, that's just picking who gets to vote in it. Check your deadline twice.”
“These are just neutral administrative safeguards, ballot integrity measures, nothing targeted — well, the ruling did find the South Carolina law unconstitutional, so maybe not that one, but the postal rule, that one's fine. Probably.”
The receipts
A judge temporarily blocked the agency from implementing a strict new rule governing mail voting. The policy could disproportionately affect Democrats and many battleground elections.
Rep. John James (R-Mich.), who is running for governor in his state, on Sunday called upcoming Michigan elections “ground zero for this republic." “We need to make sure that we stop socialism and that we save the state of Michigan, because…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.