The U.S. Postal Service is emerging as a pivotal player as the midterm elections approach.

The Voting Rights Act over its six decades became one of the most consequential laws in the nation’s history, preventing discrimination against minorities at the ballot box and helping to elect thousands of Black and Hispanic representatives at all levels of government.

President Donald Trump has instructed the Commerce Department to have the Census Bureau start work on a new census that would exclude immigrants who are in the United States illegally from the head count which determines political power and federal spending.

The Voting Rights Act was signed into law 60 years ago but has been slowly eroding for more than a decade.

In a story published Jul.

President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking broad changes to how elections are run in the U.S. is vast in scope and holds the potential to reorder the voting landscape across the country, even as it faces almost certain litigation.

In the most litigious presidential election in memory, court fights are even happening over where poll watchers may stand as the votes as tallied. The latest focus for Republicans in some places is on poll watchers, who are volunteers for candidates or political parties long used in elections. He has also falsely stated that poll watchers were “thrown out” of a polling site in Philadelphia, where he has claimed without evidence that “bad things" are happening. In Nevada, Trump's campaign and state Republicans went to court to try to stop the counting of Las Vegas-area mail-in ballots. The lawsuit was quickly resolved with an agreement that poll watchers can look at election books and approach poll workers when necessary.