On Monday, October 10, a federal holiday, U.S. District Court Judge Mark E. Walker ordered Florida to extend its deadline for individuals to register to vote from October 11 to 5 p.m. on October 12. A hearing will be held on October 12 to determine if that deadline should be extended further. This is amazingly fast work for a lawsuit that was only filed on Sunday, October 9. Here is the 16-page order in Florida Democratic Party v Scott, n.d., 4:16cv-626.

The basis is the storm emergency that sent hundreds of thousands of Florida residents away from their homes, and which caused postal mail delivery to be suspended in about half the counties of the state. The order applies statewide.

The order says, “The Constitution guarantees the right of voters to ‘cast their ballots and have them counted.’ U.S. v Classic, 313 US 299 (1941).” Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.

On October 10, NBC/WSJ released a poll for the presidential election. The results: Hillary Clinton 46%, Donald Trump 35%, Gary Johnson 9%, Jill Stein 2%, other or undecided 8%. This poll was taken after the Friday afternoon news about the Trump 2005 remarks to Billy Bush. See here. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.

Politico has this very thorough article by Election Law Professor Ned Foley, about the uncertainties of the 2016 presidential election, relative to the role of presidential electors, and also the role of Congress.

The article does not mention this, but Congress has always counted the votes of “disobedient” presidential electors. It even counted the 2004 electoral vote in which one absent-minded Minnesota presidential elector, a Democrat, voted for John Edwards for President. That same elector also voted for Edwards for Vice-President. No one knows which Minnesota presidential elector did that, because in Minnesota, at least back in 2004, electors used secret ballots. In most states the electors do not use secret ballots.