Bolts — The Kansas legislature in 2017 passed a law to let elections officials count mail ballots that arrived after Election Day, for up to three extra days, so long as the ballots were postmarked before polls closed. Kansas politicos joined other states with such a policy in calling this a “grace period.” Fast forward to this year: politicians nationwide can’t stand grace periods.

Beyond their acute concerns over grace-period bans, voting rights advocates are wary of how these changes fit into broader restrictions on voter access. Barbara Smith-Warner, was one of several voting experts who told Bolts that grace periods are one battle in the war to eliminate vote-by-mail altogether.

“You can cover it in nice language—We want to count the votes sooner, so they should be received sooner—but it’s a good way to kill two birds with one stone,” she said. “You weaken and decrease voting at home with mail ballots, and you lay the groundwork for going back to the fantasy, 1950s idea of everyone only voting on one day with paper ballots.”