 Good evening, and welcome back to CalTV Election Desk. I'm your host, Laila Ipsa. Our news tonight begins with the battle over mail-in voting. Now, you may remember back in June, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill requiring that all county leaders mail a ballot to all registered voters in California. This of course was in response to the health risk that the COVID-19 outbreak has on registered voters in California. But it's not just in California, states like New Jersey and Nevada have similar policies in place. And of course, voters in other states can always vote by mail. They just have to request that a ballot be sent to them. Not at the same time that these policies are being implemented, the U.S. Postal Service is also starting to make some changes. For starters, it's keeping mail until the next day if distribution centers are running low and removing mail boxes and mail sorting machines from facilities across the country. So at the same time that we're predicting a surge in mail-in voting, the U.S. Postal Service is cutting down its service. So what do they do? They sent out letters to several key states saying that there may not be enough time for the ballots to be requested, completed, and returned before the election. Now this obviously had a lot of people freaking out, especially Democrats. Over the weekend, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi actually called Congress back into session so that they could vote on key legislation that, if passed, would prohibit changes to the agency. And now at least 20 states plan to sue the Postal Service, alleging that these changes undermine the 2020 election. Now amid all this backlash, the U.S. Postal Service is changing course. Yesterday, the Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, says he's suspending certain changes until after the 2020 election. Now he didn't say what specific initiatives he was suspending, but he did provide some assurance. He told people that post office hours won't be changed, mail processing facilities won't be closed, and the processing equipment won't be moved. Going in on President Trump, that seems to be the theme from keynote speakers during the first couple nights of the Democratic National Convention. Now, with the convention online and millions of Americans stuck at home, the Biden campaign was really hoping to garner in a larger audience. Well, the first night of the DNC drew in about 18.7 million viewers according to early rankings. And that's about a 30% decrease from opening night of the convention back in 2016. Now this number doesn't include people that watched on other networks, who were streaming the convention, or who watched on social media platforms. So it's likely higher. But either way, the Biden campaign will look to continue to draw in more viewers as former President Barack Obama speaks and California Senator Kamala Harris accepts the vice presidential nomination tonight. And of course, tomorrow night, former Vice President Joe Biden will finish off the convention by accepting the presidential nomination. Now when California voters head to the polls in November, along with voting for President and Congress, they'll also be voting on a set of propositions. One of them is Prop 16, otherwise known as the repeal of Prop 209. Now Prop 209 is the law that forced California to use race and genderblind criteria in admissions, employment, and contracting. So if it's passed, Prop 16 would repeal Prop 209 and reinstate affirmative action in those areas. Now getting the repeal of Prop 209 on November's ballot was actually an initiative that was started by a group of students right here at UC Berkeley. Well, that's going to do it for me tonight. I'm Laila Ypsa, and I'll see you next week for another episode of CalTV Election Desk.