FiveThirtyEight – Late Check the USPS’s recommendations before dropping your vote or paperwork in the mail. “The post office has long-standing guidelines (which predate DeJoy) that recommend how much time voters and election officials should allow to apply for, send and receive mail-in ballots. “We’ve been working on this for a while across the country to encourage states to update their laws to reflect the realities of how the post office actually works,” said Amber McReynolds, CEO for the National Vote At Home Institute, a nonprofit organization that lobbies for policies that make it easier for voters to cast absentee ballots. In almost all states, even people who meet the deadline to request or mail back their ballot run the risk of their ballot not arriving on time simply because of how long the mail takes. The USPS recommends voters allow one week between when they request their ballot and when they would like to receive it, and another week between when they put their completed ballot in the mail and the state’s deadline for receiving it. But many states allow mail ballots to be requested up until a few days before Election Day, which this year falls on Nov. 3, even if the deadline for returning the ballot is the day of the election. “The reality is that voters are going to fail if election officials are being asked to mail ballots out that late,” said McReynolds…”