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It would take months at least, probably longer, to pass an amendment and have it ratified by the states. We would have to have started last November.On the other hand, we could move to vote by mail much more quickly.Badly constructed vote-by-Mail (absentee ballots) are prone to fraud but well designed systems like Washington, Oregon, and Colorado are almost completely fraud free (0.002% for Washington State). Anyone afraid of fraud need only look to these states for guidance. We have it figured out.(I live in Washington and have voted by mail for a long time. And, no, I cannot forge a ballot).The best way forward is to go in that direction.Personally I think a combination of online and vote-by-mail would be even better.I’d do it like this:Every registered voter is mailed a code to download and install a mobile app. They set up an account and password. Without the mailed code, they cannot install the app. The code expires in 30 days. With the letter there is a return form.Once the app is set up, the voter requests and gets a ten character code texted to them. The voter writes it on the Return form and mails it back. They are now registered.At election time, the voter gets a ballot in the mail. They fill it out. To return it, they either sign it (for now) or, preferred, they log in to the app with their password and get a code texted to them. They write the code on the ballot (which acts like a signature) and return it in the mail.The app itself uses biometric feedback to limit bot spoofing.Paper ballot. Verified by two factor authentication.If you lose your phone, or get a new number, or change your address, you go online and request a new registration from scratch. Your old address and new one are both sent mail as well as email to make sure the request is legit.This is even more reliable than the signature system we have now.But no, there’s no time to move the election. We have to get creative.

Hey Vicki!Great question, and one I was dying to answer…Unsurprisingly this has to do with Trump’s stupid trade war. He’s threatening to withdraw from the Universal Postal Union (UPU), a United Nations agency which allows for global postal service so he could raise shipping rates for China, setting off a new front in the trade war using the postal system.Now in all fairness, the UPU keeps shipping rates low for developing countries. It has allowed China to ship internationally at low rates for five decades, even as the country has emerged as an economic superpower.But there’s another significant ramification involved here, because thousands of absentee ballots could be uncounted in upcoming elections thanks to President Donald Trump's objection to a treaty which governs the international mail exchange for nearly 200 countries.Without U.S. membership in the UPU, overseas voters could face high shipping rates for mailing their ballots as well as mass confusion, which could leave thousands of votes uncounted in 2019 and 2020."Military and overseas citizens already face enormous hurdles casting their votes," Matthew Weil, director of the Bipartisan Policy Center's Elections Project, told The Washington Post. "These citizens may be forced to pay up to $70 to return their ballots via private shipping companies, and it's not clear all states will accept ballots delivered this way."Originally formed in 1874 to support the international mail exchange, the UPU will gather for a summit this month in Geneva, where the 192 member states will discuss changing shipping rates. The U.S. plans to withdraw from the union if new rates can't be negotiated—a move which could have a cascading effect on U.S. democracy."If the United States withdraws, the country in which you are located may not deliver the mail ballot packet that we send, or timely return your voted ballot to our office," Colorado election officials wrote recently to absentee voters who cast ballots in the state. Officials advised voters to update their voter registration to ensure their ballots are delivered electronically in November's electionElection officials have begun warning voters of the possible change."Leaving the Universal Postal Union could have disastrous consequences for American voters overseas," tweeted Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos on Monday.Leaving the Universal Postal Union could have disasterous consequences for American voters overseas. This includes our active duty military service members stationed abroad, who already face challenging barriers accessing their right to cast their ballots. https://t.co/rqHfBNTdfY— VT Sec. of State (@VermontSOS) September 16, 2019In some states the deadline for sending absentee ballots overseas for the 2019 election will have passed by the time the UPU meets beginning on September 24. If the U.S. pulls out of the union after the meeting, thousands of voters may have incorrect information when they mail their ballots.The White House's latest gamble with the economy is a quintessentially Trumpian move: a bold threat to walk away from a multilateral agreement that works pretty well, while ignoring the unintended consequences that could hurt American business, alienate allies, and cause collateral damage to democracy.More than 350,000 Americans voted via absentee ballot in the 2018 midterms, mostly with postal ballots.And that is Donald J Trump for you. Destroyer of everything that works well for the average American…This answer is in part attributed to: http://washintonpost.com Fears of 'Collateral Damage to Democracy' as Trump Weighs Withdrawing From Global Postal Pact http://content.govdelivery.com http://upu.int and Julia Conley, staff writer

1)Zombies cannot win against trench warfare.In most zombie stories, the military is depicted as useless and gets eliminated very quickly by the mass hoard of zombies.However I don’t see how that can happen. The army would simply dig trenches for the zombies to fall into. And they can recruit civilians to help them.Once finished, these will be a 3–4 stories high kill zone. Zombies will get mowed down in the open field by machine guns, and those that get past will fall into these trenches. Spikes can be put into these trenches to cause further damage. Once the zombies are trapped inside, they can be very easily disposed of. You can use a long spear to slowly poke their brains out. Or you can use a tiny bit of gasoline to light one zombie on fire, and it will burn the other zombies around until the whole trench is filled by burnt zombies.2) Automatic fail-safe systems upon death will prevent a widespread outbreak.In most zombie stories, the idea is that zombies can spread their zombie virus (or similar) quickly by biting alive victims. So one zombie becomes 3, 3 becomes 9, etc.However it really won’t take too much engineering to create a fail-safe system against that, by permanently disabling a dead body if the victim dies. There are various vital signs that humans have when they are alive, so it is easy to monitor and discover when they are dead.For example a helmet can be made, which automatically injects needles right into the brain of the victim 10 minutes after death. Death can be monitored by vital signs like heart beats and blood circulation flow. The system will give warning beeps that warns the person when it is activated, just in case the vital sign monitor malfunctions and the person is still alive. With those needles injected right into the brain, that victim will not return as a zombie no matter how many times the zombie bites him or her.In a more extreme example, explosives vest can be worn by all humans going outside and set to trigger after 10 minutes upon death. The system can create loud warning sounds to attract even more zombies and to warn away humans who are still alive. After 10 minutes the explosives on the victim will explode, taking all the zombies in the area with it.This system will work very well against necromorphs, one of the strongest zombie like creature in fiction. They don’t even need a functional brain of the victim, because they can take over and mutate any body parts. This means the only way to stop their population growth is by blowing up any dead human bodies right away.I did not take into account any chance of failures of the fail-safe system. This means these fail-safe systems might cause accidental and additional deaths, when not implemented correctly. Those will need to be explored and experimented on in those situations. But with these fail-safe systems, the idea is no one (or very few) that dies would return as a zombie.Note:1)A few posters has commented that the zombies can simply overwhelm the trenches by their numbers. I agree that no defense is perfect. But at the same time people have underestimated the power of modern weapons. Because if human wave attack works, WW1 wouldn’t have become a stalemate for so long. Trenches are very strong defense against human wave attacks, even with 1914 weapons.1.1)Firstly most zombies won’t even get into the trench. First they have to get past artillery. The modern artillery can hit targets up to 70 km away. If there are millions of tightly packed mindless zombies, they make for easy targets. Each modern shell will kill/disable 50–100 of them.See the size of that explosion compared to the apartments nearby?1.2) For those that makes it past the artillery, they will be shot down at like 2 kilometers away by machine gun. If the zombies number in the millions, they would be in very tightly pack formation and basically every single machine gun bullet will hit something. Fallen zombies will trip up standing zombies, slowing down the advance of the “zombie army”. This give the humans even more time to shoot them down. Once again, this is all happening over at 2 kilometers away.Notice that the size of each of these machine gun bullets is almost bigger than your head.1.3) So now we have those lucky zombies that got past the artillery and the machine guns on the open field, and they enter the trenches. The trench that I was mentioning would be 3 or 4 stories high. In WW1 the trenches were designed to protect the soldiers from shells. But in a zombie apocalypse, the goal of these trenches is to trap the zombies inside. In a way, they are more like ditches. It actually takes a lot of human bodies to fill up that volume.Zombies can goes in, but cannot get out.And in the meantime fire would be set to burn up the zombies inside the trenches, by oil and water. The millions of tightly packs zombies will spread the fire to one another inside the trenches. And once the zombie’s brain is deep-fried to well done, it won’t be walking again.It is nice that the Zombies are so flammable.1.4) So finally the zombies get onto the top of that trench. They expect to finally chew on those human brains. And they found….NothingWhat? What happened? Sorry but the humans have retreated to the next level of trenches. Ever since WW1, trenches were made to be easy to retreat to but hard for the attacker to advance. The zombies have to get through layers and layers of 4 stories high trenches. Meanwhile, the artillery and machine guns keep firing. And at the back, civilians will keep digging more trenches.1.5) But before all of this, the hope is that the commander of the army will firstly be smart enough to abandon the cities quickly to preserve his forces. The cities are the worst place for an army to be during a zombie apocalypse, since they cannot use their heavy equipment and zombies have a huge advantage in street to street fighting (many hidden alley ways, etc).It is physically impossible to defend a city with millions of zombies inside and car wackages everywhere. Sorry urban folks you are on your own. We have to preserve humanity.1.6) And hopefully he is smart enough to pick a good defensive location to build the defensive network. It would be on high grounds where it is easy to scout the surrounding from many km away. And offer his artillery and machine guns plenty of time to shoot down the approaching zombies.Zombie, I can see you from 200km away!1.7) And the way of attack by the zombies will be limited by natural barriers to choke points, making it easier to defend.The millions of zombies will be pushing each other off the cliff on a narrow choke point path like this, under artillery fire.At places like the Grand Canyon, you would only need to defend against Zombies from one side. The zombies coming at you from the other side would walk off the cliff and fall 500+ feet to their doom. Heck, even humans sometimes fall off the cliff by accident while taking a selfie. And it will take like 10 times the whole world’s population to fill up the Grand Canyon. This is the mother of all ditches so the commander should use it for defence.The downside of this is, of course, the difficulty of getting water from the Colorado River below, at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. They will probably need to disable the Glen Canyon Dam to increase the water levels in the Grand Canyon.Niagara Falls would make another excellent defensive position. Once again the defender only need to defend one side. All zombies from the other side would be washed away or fall off the cliff. And there is virtually unlimited water supply for the troops and surviving civilians. They can even slowly build out and make farms along the river for food. But the downside is Niagara Falls is very close the urban centres, meaning it involves the risk of urban fighting and, being so close to where the zombies will probably originate, might not give the defenders enough time to prepare the defences. But if they can set it up in time it will be so good.Another problem is Niagara falls would form “ice bridges” in the winter months, which might allow the zombies to cross on top. And in very rare cases there could be “ice jams” that would blocks the water altogether. If the commander decided to defend at Niagara Falls he would need to put these into consideration.