Sure, it's.Additionally complicated: what the current upheavals on the U.S. Postal Service, an establishment whose efficient functioning not appear
Sure, it’s.
Additionally complicated: what the current upheavals on the U.S. Postal Service, an establishment whose efficient functioning not appears to be a type of issues Individuals rely on as a part of our nationwide consensus, imply for the already-bewildering patchwork of dates and laws governing mail-in voting in every state.
Over the summer season, various head-spinning social media posts declared that Election Day is definitely going down on October 20 this yr, given the mail troubles. That’s not true, based on the fact-checking website PolitiFact, which investigated the declare with the Postal Service.
Or, not precisely true.
“The Postal Service recommends that home, nonmilitary voters mail their ballots at the least one week previous to their state’s due date to permit for well timed receipt by election officers,” a postal official stated. “The Postal Service additionally recommends that voters contact native election officers for details about deadlines.”
In July, the Postal Service took out its fog machine and sprayed much more confusion over the difficulty, sending ominous warning letters to states urging them to require that voters request ballots at the least 15 days earlier than the election.
By any goal measure, in fact — by the principles of the calendar and the legal guidelines of science — the development of time as we speak, within the seventh month of the coronavirus pandemic, is strictly the identical because it has at all times been. It could really feel like as we speak is a few faux day outdoors the conventional calendar — March 3000, or, in the event you favor, June 666 — however it’s not. The yr is transferring ahead at a relentless charge. The seasons are altering; the times are passing. An hour remains to be an hour.
It’s our perceptions which are discombobulated, Ellen Braaten, assistant professor of psychology at Harvard Medical College, identified just lately in STAT Information. Our routines are awry, and issues we rely on to occur at a specific time haven’t occurred. We’re disturbed and battered by the bewildering barrage of occasions, at the same time as our personal lives appear to be caught in stressed-out states of animated suspension. “If we’re actually anxious, we’d expertise time as slowing down,” Ms. Braaten stated. “Nervousness is a type of issues that may really make time really feel prefer it’s happening endlessly.”
Some issues are occurring similtaneously earlier than, however not in the identical approach. Memorial Day didn’t sign the beginning of summer season as many individuals normally expertise it. Labor Day received’t usher in a traditional, new-beginning fall. College feels extra like “college.”