Continued on Page 6Mail-in ballots passing through the buffer unit at
Michigan Election Resources in Kalamazoo, Mich.
14 Machinery of the People
By Emily Bazelon
20 A Ballot Is BornnThe 2020 presidential
election required many more absentee
ballots than any election in American
history. Where did they all come from?
Photographs by Christopher Payne
Text by Malia Wollan
36 Carrying the Votes Throughout the
fall, the country’s 600,000 postal work-
ers ferried by hand our democracy’s
most precious cargo: the franchise itself.
Photographs by Philip Montgomery
Text by Vauhini Vara
52 Adding Them Up Tallying so many
absentee ballots was a painstaking
eff ort, with diff erent start times in dif-
ferent states. As the count inched along,
election offi cials conducted this largely
manual process under the shadow of the
president’s baseless attacks on mail-in
voting. Photographs by Dina Litovsky
Text by Emily Bazelon
4NOVEMBER 15, 2020Photograph by Christopher Payne for The New York Times