But isn't this kinda obvious? Current WH administration is dead set to stop mailin voting. They've found a way to make that happen. I think we're all missing the obvious here.
conservatives like running on the idea that government is broken or needs to be parted out. Then they get elected and make it so via budget cuts and hiring freezes while pumping more money into Defense.
I am really concerned about November with the current administration pushing a narrative of voter fraud. Now they've appointed a partisan postmaster general which I haven't heard of being done before.
I've seen this conspiracy theory many times, but no one has yet explained how a day or two delay will stop mailin voting.
People also somehow think that the post office won't be able to deliver so much mail. Which also doesn't make sense, it's a single envelope per house, they deliver more junk mail than that.
Edit: I should add I'm 100% in favor of mailin votes always, not just now. I simply do not believe that this postal slowdown is in any way connected to those who oppose it. And that's for the simple reason that it can't accomplish that.
There's no conspiracy theory. It's historical record the lengths this country has gone to disenfranchise votes: 3/5ths personhood, poll taxes, literacy tests, multiple hour-long queues, shuttering most poll stations for large populations, warehouses left full of voting machines, and, seriously, just go look at Dan Crenshaw's district. You don't have to "stop mailin voting," you just have to make it unreliable and burdensome.
There's no conspiracy here, it's out in the public for all to see.
For comparison, it takes me about 15 minutes to go voting in Germany. That includes walking to the polling station, someone checking my id and me checking a few boxes on a paper ballot.
There is usually no queue and we don't have voting machines because they can be easily manipulated, as has been demonstrated a number of times.
Elections are held on Sundays, when most shops are closed, so that everyone can participate.
In the US, elections are held by the states, not the national government. So it is up to the states where and how many polling stations there are. Depending on the party in charge at the state level, this has been used to make it more difficult for certain sectors of the population to vote.
In times of COVID, however, mail only voting is the best alternative.
And the USPS has informed states that it may take up to 2 weeks to deliver mailed ballots.
What that means is for mail in votes to count (which again, will be more popular considering COVID) on Nov 4th, you will need to mail your vote by Oct 20th to guarantee it reaches assuming USPS is correct in its 2 week estimate.
The current administration is already laying down the foundation for votes that reach after Nov 4, even if they were postmarked before (which I believe is all that is needed) to be rejected. He tweeted today that the votes must be counted by the end of Nov 4 otherwise they would be illegitimate.
> He tweeted today that the votes must be counted by the end of Nov 4 otherwise they would be illegitimate.
He tweets lots of stupid things. It's not actually true. Each state can make their own rules on postmark vs receipt date.
People seem to forget that voting in this country was designed to work in a time where it took 2 months to count all the votes, with the result arriving by horse. Nothing has changed in the rules since then.
People will be annoyed at waiting if there is a delay, but nothing will actually break.
> this has been used to make it more difficult for certain sectors of the population to vote.
Yes, it has happened. But based on the Media usually only finding a story or two with that, it's very rare, and not the normal experience. i.e. if it was more prevalent there would be more articles, but usually I only notice 1 or 2 in an election cycle.
It's the same in the US, every election I've gone to there have been no lines at all, and it takes just a few minutes.
When there are lines (and it does happen) you can bet the media will be all over it. So if you see 5 stories about lines, then you know that the other 10 thousand or so locations had no lines, and just 5 did.
And with states having a cutoff period after which the undelivered votes will not be counts. If you can delay a significant number of votes beyond that period, you’ve managed to block someone’s votes.
Especially pernicious is that many vulnerable people who previously would be unable to vote (no car, no real social contact, etc) now theoretically would be able to vote, which could be cut off.
I worked on a USPS integration for years. I have mixed feelings about the USPS but one thing is clear. They price incorrectly. It should have never been less expensive to ship a parcel from Beijing to Washington, then from Detroit to Washington.
Many of USPS' problems could be solved simply by raising prices. The USPS clearly wins business on the last mile service level, and it would open up new opportunity for others to deliver Amazon packages if prices went up.
One other little known fact about the USPS is they cut lucrative deals for big customers. Negotiated Rates (NSA) can allows companies such as Amazon to buy postage at a significant discount. These deals should be eliminated. Why should a poor person pay more for postage than Jeff Bezos to ship the same thing?
From left field this is one of my ideas: Post offices could be replaced by adopting a NinjaVan model. Why can't every corner store in San Francisco be a post office? It would be amazing.
Up until very recently, the rates that the USPS could charge for delivery of mail from China (and other foreign countries) was set by the Universal Postal Union which is an agency of the UN. The USPS had no control over this pricing.
> I have mixed feelings about the USPS but one thing is clear. They price incorrectly. It should have never been less expensive to ship a parcel from Beijing to Washington, then from say, Detroit to Washington.
Well, that actually worked really well for a long long time since the USPS was netting a lot of money through that because the USPS was the one taking advantage of other countries on this. It was only in the last five years that it started playing against the US.
What are the losses they realize shipping last mile parcels?
If you're referring to agreements like their NSA with Amazon (the example from your parent post), that shouldn't be resulting in any losses. They're not legally allowed to set rates which result in a net financial loss; taking into account potential cost efficiencies from the increased volume, at the very least the NSA rates have to break even.
For other classes of parcel service, it's entirely possible they're losing money (I'm not sure). But that's because it takes a literal act of Congress for them to touch those rates. Even addressing the "cheaper to ship from China than domestically" was a situation outside of their control - it resulted from an international treaty[1] the US is a party to, and required leveraging authority beyond the USPS's purview to address the situation (in this case, by threatening to pull out of the treaty).
There are 900 post offices and approx. 2000 parcel lockers (population 5.5M).
They have also taken steps due to the dramatically decreased amount of mail in the last decade (over 50% down since 2010 - this year yearly decrease has been 15-20% so far):
- Yearly price increases of letter mail (50g letter stamp is now at 1.75€).
- Slowed down the basic letter services (first class stamped letter went from 1 day to 4 days).
- Reduced delivery frequency (no mail delivery on Tuesdays if possible).
- Mail may now be delivered later during the day.
And of course large layoffs, which have probably resulted in a reduction of service quality - public complaints seem to have increased.
“ Negotiated Rates (NSA) can allows companies such as Amazon to buy postage at a significant discount. These deals should be eliminated. Why should a poor person pay more for postage than Jeff Bezos to ship the same thing?“
Rather than suggest that Jeff Bezos gets a deal on postage due to his influence, perhaps a better characterization is that the American consumer enjoys the efficiencies of bulk purchasing power, essentially arranged on our behalf by Amazon, which lowers our shipping costs. Bezos doesn’t get cheaper postage than we do; we buy things off amazon and win.
First, so that it can be privatized and turned over to the free market, for which I will offer no opinion. That can be argued effectively to no real end on both sides, similar to a discussion about Amtrak or farming subsidies.
Second, the fact that the Postmaster is a Trump acolyte in an election year where there will be a record number of vote-by-mail responses should tell you all you need to know about what the true motivations are.
Mail in ballots still need to get to the voter before Election Day. If the voter doesn’t deliver it to a post office or a poll station before Election Day it doesn’t get counted. Can you imagine how pissed people will be if Election Day rolls around and fewer than 50% of mail-in voters have been delivered ballots? Taxation without representation doesn’t go over well in the USA.
Yes, people can go to a polling place and file a provisional, but the whole point of mail-in is so we don’t have to. Also, with COVID affecting older people more than younger, there may be a shortage of poll workers.
Also prep time: The county election office needs a reliable estimate of how long the mail leg will take so they can target the process of printing and sending the voter package. They need to be able to print some of the packages on short notice for newly registered voters and party affiliation changes.
If that's an accurate description of the delay, then I agree.
However, I've seen tweets suggesting that recent (since COVID lockdowns) delays of more than a week are currently not uncommon and I don't have any evidence that the USPS is shrinking their backlog right now. Given the current trajectory (eg. the current Postmaster General is denying overtime), I expect the possibility of many ballots missing delivery by Election Day unless USPS prioritizes those deliveries.
you may be correct - however, a lot of voter suppression is comparatively soft. more along the lines of discouragement. remove polling places, cause long lines, that gets on the news, people don’t bother to go after they get off work.
At least in MD ballots just need to be postmarked by Election Day to be counted. What states require ballots to arrive by Election Day? That seems like a much less transparent policy unless there are guarantees on delivery time...
I'm imagining massive pressure on Biden to concede before mail-in votes are counted, maybe combined with a 2000-style lawsuit that delays things even more.
Not outside the realm of possible, but why do that if you can achieve the same goal in subtler ways? 2000 was a “close call” because 10s of thousands of people in primarily-black communities in florida had their voting infra degraded to the point of uselessness. Voting infra is a proven strategy to tip the scales towards the kleptocrats
Say I am an Oregon resident who can vote by mail by default. This election season, I'm stuck at my job site in North Carolina. I can request Oregon mail by ballot to my location in NC then vote and mail it back. As long as it is postmarked before the election ends I'm good and my vote makes it in to be counted.
But what if it takes 2 weeks to get from Oregon to NC then back from NC to Oregon? And then another week to be handled last mile and finally gets to the office? It gets to the right place and is counted weeks after the election ends and is effectively decided by most analysts. Or maybe it doesn't even get to me in time and my vote doesn't count.
Oregon I'd trust to open and count it accordingly as it checks all the boxes to be legit. But maybe another state is not set up for this process and hacks it together the month before the election. Maybe in that state my ballot doesn't make it to NC on time or even until after the election. Maybe once the ballot makes it home, it sits another 2 weeks in a backlog as a poorly funded, overworked team tries to catch up and confirm/reconcile votes across in person and this new mail in system. Maybe byt the time my ballot is done, it's the second week of December and the commission or Secretary of State isn't sure it has the right numbers and has to do a recount (or ignores it as clearly it's a broken system anyway, according to the president, so of course it would be off).
All of a sudden, we have another Constitutional crisis on our hands. The guy in charge has spread misinformation or full on fake news about an otherwise working system. He argued against and his party rejected any efforts to fund the mail in side of the national election even though it was openly attacked by foreign nations last time and is no more secure than then. Maybe GOP governors and secretaries of state who follow the president closely use his claims so that, due to expanded mail in voting, of course the numbers don't match polling or prior data so the election itself is a sham. Whether the numbers show Trump winning or losing, it's all a sham and can be ignored or taken before SCotUS which luckily has a few of your guys (Federalist Society picks) on the majority.
The dilemma is we need to oust any official who aims to undermine any government system or program, in words or actions, unless they are working on factually reported data and studies that indicate change is needed (which is almost always). The current administration has been lying to its citizens from day 1. Somehow that hasn't forced the resignation.
At this point UPS/Fedex should step in and offer free shipping for ballots. Voters can drop off in their stores or their delivery people/trucks can act as pick up spots too. If nothing else it might buy them some goodwill. Or conscience.
Possibly accelerated, but for several years they've been moving in the direction of assuming nobody will visit a post office unless they have no other option and have reduced hours to whatever they think they can get away with politically.
Ten years ago there were quite a few post offices open 24/7/365. Today the 24-hour locations are at best 18/7 and the more usual hours are better than traditional banker's but worse than retail M-F, limited on Saturday, and LOLGFY on Sunday. Which limits their revenue to whatever services they have a legal monopoly on, plus package services for businesses where the shipper wasn't going to the post office to mail things anyhow.
I send hundreds of packages a month. Last two years were great - almost everything would always get there within 2-3 days with minimal delays. About a month ago it started to get really bad all at once. Packages from CA to OH routed through HI (what?), packages reported as delivered disappearing with no record, etc. we’ll see what happens in Black Friday and cyber Monday. I predict a lot of ruined christmases.
I suspect something unusual is happening too. I've been watching a tiny package I ordered being shipped from San Mateo to Palo Alto via UPS. It has been 7 days, and for the last 4 days its status in San Leandro has been:
"Package departed UPS Mail Innovations facility enroute to USPS for induction"
Can't wait for that dark chocolate cocoa floss!
Maybe. I receive several packages a week, and this is the first time I've seen a weird delay since the pandemic started. That's why I found it unusual.
One usps package never arrived. It's been under investigation for > 1 month.
One (ironically amazon) package shipped via usps came 1 month late, in a non-amazon box, with the original label slapped on a cutout where the non-amazon box label used to be. The package was 2 pairs of pants, 4 dvds and a usb gizmo. What arrived was 1 pair of pants and a usb gizmo. Everything else was just gone. Thank goodness it was an amazon package -- called them up, they refunded immediately and the replacements are on the way.
Considering how bad it is in Chicago. I can't imagine how bad it's going to get.
What really ticks me off is that it's tolerated that they're that bad. They won't even mark a package as delayed. They'll intentionally scan it as delivered right before the end of "window of delivery" and deliver it when they feel like it. Could be tomorrow could be next week.
Amazon is reporting packages as handed over to carrier very early in the morning, but all packages are getting ingress scanned either right before delivery one day later, or about an hour after all the trucks depart with their delivers for that day.
I haven't had a single package of about 8 be undelayed by the USPS in the last two months, and the delay had been two days on some.
It's gotten bad enough that Amazon is shipping to me with UPS a lot more than they used to
One thing of interest, I was very recently contacted by USPS, did a user interview with them and was subsequently put in touch with an account representative. That feels like a positive change.
On the other hand, our packages (all sent via Priority Mail which is supposed to be 2-3 business days though has changed to 2-4 business days) have been getting delayed recently and in some cases taking as long as 14 days.
Going to be the devil's advocate on this one. The current policy creates an incentive for unnecessary overtime. That can distort the real demand for labor. Eliminating the incentive could allow the USPS to find out the actual demand, and hire the right number of workers to get the mail out on time.
What's interesting is while this is happening I'm seeing a strong push in placed like reddit for folks to register to vote by mail. It kind of feels like election interference - intentionally slow down the mail, and at the same time encourage Democrats to vote by mail.
Does anyone else remember maybe 10 or 20 years ago the post office did this whole restructure to significantly increase speed?
It used to take 5 days for first class mail and they reduced it to 2, at significant cost, but they were trying to complete with email.
Seems like we are going back to those days. But maybe it doesn't matter, do many people really rely on mail speed these days when you can send an email?
Saying as 90% of my packages are delivered by USPS, yes I care about mail speed. Letters aren’t the only thing handled by the post office. Also when I need to get my credit card replaced for some reason you better believe I care about speed of delivery. I’m sure I could list more examples.
I've seen USPS tracking be very misleading, with Expected Delivery by 8:00PM...and the next day the same status, until finally you see Out for Delivery, which is the day it will actually arrive.
Between the terrible tracking, and the occasional goofy routing detours, USPS is doing themselves no favors.
Three times in the past year, I've had packages marked as "Delivered at/in mailbox" that weren't actually delivered until 2-3 days later. The most recent was particularly worrying, since it contained my new passport (which I'd already been waiting on for 5 months since passport processing had mostly been shut down due to COVID). This was at different addresses, with different local USPS destination facilities.
It seems they're aware that it's an issue, since it says in their FAQ "package may show as 'delivered' but could take additional 24 hours". I assume it happens when they get behind somehow and just mark a lot of stuff delivered to meet their metrics.
