[2026 election Voter Guide: Who is running in this November’s midterm elections?]

There are still 32 days until Election Day, but my advice to voters who have mail-in ballots is to cast them now.

Yes, the U.S. Supreme Court has halted a Trump administration push to revamp mail-in voting that one whistleblower alleged would have created chaos and led to untold numbers of disenfranchised voters. But the president is still intent on curbing this method of voting, and who knows what he’ll direct the U.S. Postal Service to do as it gets closer to Election Day. So if you have a mail-in ballot, fill it out and cast it today.

Some anxious Democrats are urging their voters to skip the post office altogether. Mercer County’s clerk sent a mailer to voters urging them to use ballot dropboxes instead, and Democrats in Maplewood have issued a similar warning.

I had intended to make the same plea. Dan Bryan, a Democratic political operative, said I was being a bit of a worrywart and cautioned that such warnings this far out from Election Day are irresponsible.

“I think there is no evidence that between now and let’s call it a few days before Election Day anyone has anything to worry about putting their ballot in the mail,” Bryan said.

Putting a mail-in ballot in a dropbox is more foolproof, he conceded, because that avoids the post office middleman altogether, but it also adds an additional barrier for voters with busy lives. Looking up the location of and driving to a dropbox is a few steps harder than sticking a stamp on a ballot and leaving it in your own mailbox, he said.

One of the reasons vote-by-mail is so effective, he said, is “because it’s really f***ing easy.”

That’s fair, but I would say this particular errand is so important, even the busiest among us should find the time to do it and avoid any possibility of the Postal Service screwing with your vote. You can find our local dropbox here.

I do not think this is an area where only Democrats should be concerned, though obviously the president’s mission here is to help the GOP.

The unnamed whistleblower alleges the Postal Service had planned to create a new online portal to screen ballots submitted by election officials prior to them being mailed to voters. If a single ballot in a large batch could not be verified — even if the problem was, say, a recently married woman whose last name has changed — then the entire batch of ballots would be rejected, the whistleblower alleged. A voter expecting a mail-in ballot may not even know that ballot was rejected until it’s too late to request a new one.

I live in Bloomfield, where 67% of voters cast ballots for Democrat Kamala Harris in 2024. But 7,308 of my neighbors voted for Trump. It is implausible to believe that a rejection of a large batch of mail-in ballots by our post office wouldn’t also result in some Republican voters not getting their ballots.

I myself will vote in person because I’m a Gen X-er who still pays for cable TV and has a working iPod; I prefer to cast my ballot the old-fashioned way. But I don’t plan to wait until Election Day. Early in-person voting in New Jersey starts Oct. 24. I’m voting early and you should, too.

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