Imagine this Sunday, the team captains for the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots meet at the 50-yard line for the coin toss. But just before they toss the coin, an NFL official comes on the PA system to make a few last-minute announcements: There are now three downs instead of four, a touchdown is now worth eight points and each quarter is now 20 minutes instead of 15. Both teams would be scrambling. The 70,000 fans in Levi’s Stadium and the 200 million watching on TV around the world would struggle to recall the rule changes. And after the game, the losing team’s fans would cry foul. Trump and some Republicans are pushing to do the exact same thing with the November elections. Fortunately, no one in the NFL would ever do this. But President Donald Trump and some Republicans are pushing to do the exact same thing with the November elections. For most of us, November seems a long way off, especially when you haven’t even figured out where the kids will go for summer camp. But for the nearly 20,000 people who run elections across the United States, we’re not far from the coin toss. Right now, in local elections offices from Seattle to Miami and everywhere in between, election administrators are busy checking thousands of signatures submitted by candidates to get on the ballot, putting the finishing touches on training manuals for election judges and poll workers and sending out postcards to verify addresses of…
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