The idea of election day being tomorrow seems almost quaint given that tens of millions of ballots have already been cast. Many were put in the mail. Congress, including senators not up for re-election, has been watching performance of the Postal Service. WTOP Capitol Hill Correspondent Mitchell Miller joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin with details.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin I don’t know how much this really contributes to the average daily volume of the Postal Service, but it’s something for them to look at and talk about.

Mitchell Miller Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of lawmakers before the election were concerned that the U.S. Postal Service might not be up to the job. They were worried because there’s been such a surge in mail-in voting. Obviously, there was more in 2020 because of the pandemic. But still, evidence has shown that there’s a lot more people mailing in their ballots. And of course, there’s been early voting in person as well. One of the people that’s been looking at this is Virginia Sen. Mark Warner (D), the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He’s been keeping a close eye on several issues. I got a chance to talk to him recently. One of them is the Postal Service and its ability to make the timely delivery of mail in ballots. He says it does seem that the Postal Service overall has been up to this task. There had been these concerns that were raised by secretaries of state and others. It’s been a big concern in Virginia, but so far, he says the evidence is good that that it’s going well. Another concern he has as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is disinformation, and he’s urging voters to be vigilant.

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Mark Warner (audio clip) I think we’re all going to be tested. There are other nations, China, Russia and Iran in particular, who want to interfere in our elections, and they have a candidate choice. But at the end of the day, what they mostly want to do is undermine our confidence in our system.

Mitchell Miller Now, Warner and other lawmakers have also been getting security briefings related to any potential threats to the Capitol after the election. So far, he says he’s seen nothing specific in that regard. And he’s also been encouraged that there haven’t been any widespread reports of threats to election volunteers. But the other thing that he mentioned when we were speaking is that people should be really be ready for a long election night and perhaps a long election week. With such a close race, lawyers at the ready in battleground states, it’s possible we may not know the results of this election for several days. You’ll remember in 2020, the election actually wasn’t called for Joe Biden until the weekend after the Tuesday election. So even though many people are ready for this election to be over, it’s not quite going to be ending probably tomorrow.

Tom Temin Yeah, it’s not exactly like FDR and Thomas Dewey in 1944 when Roosevelt had dinner and already knew that he’d won.

Mitchell Miller Right, Exactly.

Tom Temin Yeah. Well, then there was 2000 where it went to the Supreme Court and it was days and weeks. The famous chad issues. Golly nibs.

Mitchell Miller Incredible.

Tom Temin Yeah. We managed to louse it up ourselves without any help from Iran and all those countries. But anyway, so the other issue I guess you’re watching is control of the House. And the Senate looks really close.

Mitchell Miller It does. It’s really going to be. Many people think actually the race for the House is actually going to be just as close as the race for the White House. You have basically about two dozen races across the country that are really going to decide whether Republicans stay in power or whether they are ousted by Democrats. A lot of them are in New York and California. And because they’re in California, that’s another reason why we probably won’t know the results of who is actually in charge of the U.S. House of Representatives for not just a week, but probably several weeks. Many of those election results, as you know, take a long time to come through, sometimes several weeks. So we’ll have to see what happens there. There are also some very close races in Virginia and Maryland. And really with just a four vote margin one way or the other, it’s going to be super, super razor thin. And then you move to the U.S. Senate, another very, very close battle. But it does seem like Republicans do have the edge heading into Election Day. There have just been so many cases where Democrats are on defense and they knew that going into the election. So with West Virginia likely flipping over to Republicans and Montana Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat in trouble against Tim Sheehy, a businessman out there in Montana, it looks like those two races in and of themselves could decide the U.S. Senate. And then there are several others in battleground states. And it’s really going to be, I think, a matter of what kind of margin that Republicans might be able to get as we go forward and see what happens over the next few days.

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Tom Temin We’re speaking with Mitchell Miller, Capitol Hill correspondent for WTOP. And of course, the reason we talk about it here is because very different visions for the federal bureaucracy, agency funding and priorities could switch a lot depending on what happens in Congress and, of course, in the White House.

Mitchell Miller Right. Absolutely. And we’re going to see that actually probably play out with the lame duck session. There’s obviously the huge issue of getting federal assistance in the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton. And one of the first things that lawmakers are going to do is they’re going to take up funding for the Small Business Administration. Just last week, there were senators from North Carolina, Louisiana, Florida. They put out a bill. Basically, they want to give more money to the SBA. More than a half billion dollars to the loan program, which is essentially depleted because there’s been so many things going on in connection with those hurricanes. So they really need to re-up that money. The question is how much money is going to be approved and how quickly will it be approved. And I think that is also going to be dependent, as you noted, on who knows that they’re coming into power or remaining in power in January. And so that’s really going to shuffle a lot of federal funds around and really affect a lot of federal agencies.

Tom Temin And briefly, when does Congress actually come back into session?

Mitchell Miller Believe it or not, they don’t come back until a week from Tuesday. So we will already be well into November before they come back. And let’s not forget, they also have the broader issue of FEMA funding. They have to replenish the disaster aid related to that. And by the way, they need to approve a budget. And so there is a lot of work that’s going to have to be done during the lame duck session.

Tom Temin And by the way, what do the fortifications look like around Capitol Hill because of the election going on?

Mitchell Miller Right. Well, we’ve already seen it around the Capitol. Every day I walk in, I see evidence of this. Many of the doors around the U.S. Capitol, they have all been changed. They have been fortified. There clearly are new security systems in place, more monitoring. And then, of course, you’ve had a lot of work done on the Capitol overall in the wake of January 6th. There was about $3 million in damage done on that day. And so they’ve replaced and hardened a lot of the windows. And then, in fact, you can see they’re already getting ready for the inauguration. There is actually a smaller fencing area that goes around the area that’s in front of the west part of the Capitol. So a lot of preparations underway right now. And of course, behind the scenes, a lot of security preparations being taken as well.

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