Administration loses mail-voting case in court three times, wins it anyway with a quietly redesigned postcard.

…(cont) Three rulings, one administration, zero wins on the version of the question argued in open court.

The postcard was the version argued nowhere. While judges were occupied with the Postal Service's rule, the overseas voter registration postcard got redesigned — not blocked, not appealed, not put in front of nine justices, just changed. On October 2 the Democratic National Committee filed suit, saying the new version makes it harder for some US citizens abroad to register to vote. No injunction caught this one on its way out the door; the lawsuit found it already finished.

It is survived by the Americans who register to vote from an address outside the United States, the same people the DNC names in its suit as the ones who will find it harder now.

It was preceded in death by three court rulings that tried, in that louder fight, to keep the system standing: a federal judge's second block on the mail-in rule, the First Circuit's rejection of the administration's appeal on September 10, and the Supreme Court's rejection on September 15. None of the three reviewed the postcard; no suit asked a judge to, until the DNC's did, on October 2.

That is not hogwash, that is the method. Lose the loud fight three times, on the record, in front of judges who write their reasoning down, and still collect the quiet one, because the quiet one did not reach a judge at all.

In lieu of flowers, the administration is asked to publish, in plain language, exactly what changed on the overseas voter postcard and why, before a ballot goes missing somewhere behind it.