Spanish views from a small town

From across the pond more news of excess flies to our ears. This time, it's the Postal Service. Thanks to the devil virus, during the primaries this year, many people requested mail-in ballots. This summer, many are requesting mail-in ballots for November. Among them are my daughter and I, though ours would have been absentee ballots even without a pandemic. Whether our vote counts or not, though, depends on the speed with which the ballots are delivered. The new Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, appointed this May, announced from the beginning he was going to put into place cost cutting measures, including no overtime, reducing personnel, and closing some offices. All this during a pandemic, with people ordering online, and the Postal Service delivering most of that merchandise, and during an election year. As a result, the speed with which the mail-in ballots will be delivered is in question. States have their own criteria on how long it should take the ballots to arrive and...

This Sunday there are regional elections here in Galicia and in Euskadi ( a lso known as the Basque Country). As usual, the official campaign lasts two weeks, as opposed to two years in the U.S., though the unofficial lasts almost as long. Sometime during those two weeks, the major parties send out flyers to all registered voters. Since everyone eighteen and over is automatically registered, every adult in every household gets them. Pity the poor mail carriers.  In Galicia, the major parties are PSOE (Socialists), PP (conservatives), BNG (nationalists), En Marea (a coalition of leftist Galician parties and Podemos), and Ciudadan os (someone once called them a "decaffeinated PP") . When you open up the envelopes, you weep for the fallen trees. In each there is a message, a ballot, and an envelope. The ballot and envelope are there so when you go to the polling station, you don't have to wait in line. You can just walk up to the ballot box, present your national ID or dri...