Trump asks Supreme Court a third time to save mail ballot rule officials already call too late.

…(cont) So I went out to the garage a little after two, because that's where I go when a number won't leave me alone, and I got down the toolbox and started sorting good bolts from the ones that strip, which is a thing I do instead of sleeping. I went through the pile more than once before I trusted it. Does a job come out righter the second time you check it? Sometimes. Does asking the same court the same question again make the answer any different? That one I can't answer from a toolbox.

Here's the part that had me out there past two. The same Friday that judge extended her block on the federal rule — September 4th — North Carolina's own election board sat down and rewrote its rules for which mail ballots get disqualified over a signature mismatch, hours before those same ballots went out in the mail. Is that enough time for anyone — a voter, a poll worker, a lawyer — to learn the rule their ballot will be judged by before the ballot is already gone? I keep asking that one and I keep not having an answer, which might be the point.

Actually — hold on, before I let this go. Today, the ninth, election officials are on the record saying they are already out of time to put in place whatever the Supreme Court decides, whenever it decides it. Their request is still sitting in front of the justices, unanswered, while the very officials who would have to carry it out are the ones saying there's nothing left to carry it out with. I'm sorry — I keep coming back to that number, and I know it's a strange thing to lose sleep over. But I got up this morning and looked again, because I still couldn't leave it alone, and what I keep circling is that both sides used the same word about themselves this week, just pointed in opposite directions: one side going back to the Court a third time, the other side saying, on the record, that there isn't any left. Time.