“I think it’s going to be a terrible time for this country… this is going to be the scam of all time.”

— President Trump, ranting about mail voting before abruptly ending his press conference.

“A Court of Claims judge ruled that Michigan clerks must accept late ballots so long as they are postmarked no later than November 2 and received before the deadline for certifying election results, or 14 days after the election,” the Detroit News reports.

A federal judge in Washington state granted a request from 14 states to temporarily block operational changes within the U.S. Postal Service that have been blamed for a slowdown in mail delivery, saying that President Trump and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy are “involved in a politically motivated attack on the efficiency of the Postal Service” that could disrupt the 2020 election, the Washington Post reports.

“The Pennsylvania Supreme Court extended the state’s mail ballot deadlines on Thursday, a move that could allow tens of thousands of additional votes to be counted — and will likely draw criticism from Republicans, who have argued that votes should be received by Election Day,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

“State law says mail ballots must be received by 8 p.m. on Election Day, but the high court said Thursday that ballots will be counted if they are received by 5 p.m. the Friday after the Nov. 3 election. To count, ballots arriving after Election Day must either be postmarked by Nov. 3 or have no proof they were sent afterward.”

“After months of warnings about the risks posed by in-person voting in a push to expand access to mail-in ballots, Democrats across the country are increasingly focused on communicating to voters that it is safe to cast their ballots in a voting booth,” CNN reports.

“The shift comes after a national legal campaign has successfully resulted in expanded access to mail-in voting in nearly every state — prompting an unprecedented shift in the way millions of Americans will be able to vote due to the coronavirus pandemic.”

“But as voting is set to begin in more states in the coming weeks, Democrats have settled on a strategy of emphasizing that all voting options, including in-person early and Election Day voting, are safe amid the pandemic.”

Dan Coats, who served as President Trump’s director of national intelligence, writes in the New York Times that “every conceivable effort” must be taken to safeguard November’s election from claims of illegitimacy.

“Our democracy’s enemies, foreign and domestic, want us to concede in advance that our voting systems are faulty or fraudulent… If those are the results of this tumultuous election year, we are lost, no matter which candidate wins. No American, and certainly no American leader, should want such an outcome.”

A NBCLX/YouGov poll finds that 65% of Democrats who say they plan to vote by mail expect to send their ballots off at least a month before Election Day, compared to just 49% of independents and 40% of Republicans who responded the same way.

Just 8% of Democrats who said they’ll vote by mail plan to wait until the last week before Nov. 3 to cast their ballots, compared to 14% of independents and 18% of Republicans.

“A quiet change to Alaska’s 2020 general election ballot has drawn the ire of the Alaska Democratic Party, which says the move is biased, lacks transparency and was disclosed days before ballots are mailed to overseas voters,” the Anchorage Daily News reports.

“Candidates no longer have their party registrations listed on the ballot. Instead, they’re only listed as the nominee of a particular party or as having entered a race through the petition process.”

“The change primarily affects Al Gross, running for U.S. Senate against incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan, and Alyse Galvin, running for U.S. House against longtime Republican incumbent Don Young. Both have made being independent of a major party a central part of their campaigns.”

Politico: “The most important states in the 2016 election are among the least likely states to count their votes and declare a winner on election night this year. Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are expecting huge surges in ballots cast by mail in 2020, like most states preparing to vote during the coronavirus pandemic. But all three Midwestern battlegrounds, which President Donald Trump flipped in 2016 to win the White House after years of Democratic presidential victories there, are among the states where local election officials are not allowed to start processing mail ballots until Election Day.”

“Mail ballot processing involves everything from opening envelopes to checking voter signatures to flattening ballots that have been crumpled or creased in transit. The procedures can be time consuming, and that will create a backlog of millions of votes set to draw out the counting process for days after the polls close. That means that the country may be waiting, along with voters in the three Midwestern states, to see whether Trump or Joe Biden carried their electoral votes — and potentially the presidency.”

“For a few weeks, Donald Trump’s advisers had seemingly gotten through to him — the president was finally encouraging his supporters to vote by mail, at least some of the time,” Politico reports.

“On-message Trump didn’t last long. He recently appeared to suggest people vote twice — voting in-person as a way to determine if their mail-in ballot had been counted — later warning Democrats would be ‘thieving and stealing and robbing’ their way to an election win. Now, five Republicans close to the president’s campaign say that if Trump keeps up his vacillating mail-in voting rhetoric, they fear infrequent voters, especially older ones, will simply sit out the election.”

“The massive fraud that people are talking about doesn’t exist and won’t exist.”

— Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge (R), quoted by the Philadelphia Inquirer, dismissing President Trump’s claims there will be massive voter fraud in the November election.