August 14, 2020 | Reading Time: < 1 minute
It’s really happening
I’m hiking in a place akin to Eden, but I had to stop to tell you. This is sabotage in real time, my friends. A headline just in from the Post: “Postal Service warns 46 states their voters could be disenfranchised by delayed mail-in ballots.” The nut graf: “The Postal Service sent letters to most…
I’m hiking in a place akin to Eden, but I had to stop to tell you. This is sabotage in real time, my friends. A headline just in from the Post: “Postal Service warns 46 states their voters could be disenfranchised by delayed mail-in ballots.” The nut graf: “The Postal Service sent letters to most of the country’s top officials saying it cannot guarantee ballots cast by mail will arrive on time, sketching a grim possibility for the tens of millions of Americans eligible for mail-in ballots this fall: Even if people follow all of their state’s election rules, the pace of Postal Service delivery may disqualify their votes.”
Hang on to your butts. –John Stoehr
John Stoehr is the editor of the Editorial Board. He writes the daily edition. Find him @johnastoehr.
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Hey at least they’re honest and upfront about their thievery. That they are stating that the Post Office can supposedly no longer do what it’s been doing for 150+ years tells us everything we need to know about their evil and corruption.
We should appreciate their arrogance and cockiness because they are overplaying their hand. They are so focused on screwing mail-in balloting that they can’t see that people not receiving paychecks and other payments, bills, medications, and other important correspondence will get enraged. Furthermore, most people like the Post Office and respect postal workers because the workers are people we know and see on a regular basis. Screwing with mail delivery, dissing postal workers, and blowing up the postal service which everyone relies on will only confirm and amplify the same massive incompetencies DJT and crew have shown dealing with the pandemic and the economy.
Every person who gets an absentee/mail-in ballot (they are really the same thing) should hand deliver if possible their ballot at the elections offices or polling places. If necessary, you may even need to vote in person. Otherwise skunks like Trump, DeJoy, Barr, et. al. will pull off a coup d’etat.
I’ve been talking about this on Twitter and Facebook since Louis DeJoy was nominated as Postmaster General.
The WORST, least productive thing any of us have been doing is try to save the USPS in order to save the election. The letters that the USPS has just sent to 46 states confirm that what DeJoy has already done will make it almost impossible to rely on the USPS to support at-home voting.
We need to stop fooling ourselves and bypass the USPS for both delivery of ballots to at-home voters and return of ballots by the same voters.
The return part is actually easier to solve than the delivery part. All other restrictions in the attached list aside, I haven’t found any state that requires at-home ballots to be returned through the USPS. Every state that allows at-home voting also makes drop boxes available for return of at-home ballots. And except for Alabama, all allow some form of ballot return by someone other than the voter.
For return of at-home ballots, all the states need to do is add to the resources and further loosen the rules they already have in place. They could increase the number of drop boxes and let local boards of elections use volunteer “freedom couriers” to stand in for USPS letter carriers.
They need to do the same thing for delivery of at-home ballots to voters that they do for return of at-home ballots.
There doesn’t appear to be any Constitutional requirement for states to rely on the USPS for this. For delivery of ballots to voters, they could all allow local boards of elections to recruit, train, and deploy volunteers from local civic organizations, e.g. Leagues of Women Voters, Kiwanis, Lions, Rotary and other clubs, retired postal workers and others to do this.
We can “Save the USPS” in 2021. Right now we need to bypass the USPS to save the election.
https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/vopp-table-10-who-can-collect-and-return-an-absentee-ballot-other-than-the-voter.aspx
I’m taking mine directly to the board of elections the same day I fetch it from the mail box
This morning Prof Laurence Tribe posted information that is important relating to mailed ballots; https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1294581734349123586.html
At least 15 states including CT have drop boxes. Order abs ballot now, get it next week. Drop off. Voila. Done by Sept.
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“Since June, with no reason or explanation, the USPS has removed or destroyed at least 671 mail-sorting machines throughout the United States. . . . As of August 14, the capacity of the USPS to process mail has been reduced by over 21.4 million pieces of mail per hour.”
I am stunned by the magnitude.
https://zcomm.org/…/eyJpZCI6MTAzNzYwMCwidmlldyI6ImVtYWlsIn0/
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