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Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

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Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#221

Post by dane-pgp »

zanny wrote: post #142
ethanbond wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Republicans. It is Republicans who think more people voting means they will lose. Now is a time to be absolutely frank and direct with our words and our actions. Our democracy is not invincible. It is not inevitable. It is teetering on the brink and if it falls, there is absolutely no guarantee that it will recover. There is exactly one party who is trying to undermine the most basic principle of our democracy, and t…

Note that just because Republicans are wrong (and boy are they) does not make Democrats right. Democratic administrations, even with majorities to pass legislation, have done nothing to correct much of the anti-democratic processes in the US including elections being on a non-holiday Tuesday, absentee ballots being limited / restricted and operating state-by-state, the persistence of first past the post voting being…

> Democratic administrations, even with majorities to pass legislation, have done nothing to correct much of the anti-democratic processes in the US including elections being on a non-holiday Tuesday, absentee ballots being limited / restricted and operating state-by-state, the persistence of first past the post voting being the least representative form of election, the continued existence of the electoral college and senate, nothing to correct the loss of voting rights for felons, and more.

How many of those issues could the Democrats have fixed without passing a constitutional amendment? Such a change requires more than a Democratic administration with a legislative majority.

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#222

Post by creato »

Simulacra wrote: post #213
chillwaves wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will need to find some evidence of voter fraud for mail in ballots. Many states have it as an option and it hasn't happened. The military regularly votes by mail and it hasn't happened. It's funny you open your reply about "absurdly dramatic" then lay an equally absurd claim about vote-by-mail having a problem with fraud. Your reply also conveniently ignores the historical pattern of voter suppression coming from…

But the military I think we can trust more than the Postal Service, every time we hear of a postal employee destroying or throwing away mail should be a significant enough reason that the agency is simply not ready to take this on. Maybe at the next election, maybe with a significantly more funding, transparency, and security, but not now. Mail in voting would be great, but not now. It’s far too dangerous.

Tell that to people that live in Colorado, Oregon, Washington, or (mostly) Utah. They've been voting by mail for years.

I'd worry a lot more about computerized election systems before voting by mail. I think people are too worried about individual votes/errors. 0.0x% of ballots being lost/not counted/etc. is a problem with any election system ("hanging chads", signatures not matching well, ...), not just voting by mail. The question should be how hard is it to pull off a large scale disruption/fraud without being detected.

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#223

Post by dane-pgp »

_-david-_ wrote: post #169
ethanbond wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Photo ID laws is a big one. Closing polling stations in minority communities.

Can you name a first world county that doesn't have voter id laws?

Australia and (most of) the UK:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_Identification_laws#Exam...

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#224

Post by Havoc »

happytoexplain wrote: post #128
Havoc wrote: post #122

I don't quite get why this is #1 on hn?

Give the thread a read. There's a dramatic significance beyond "Philly's mail is delayed".

A right. Another Fascism play.

Agree that is unfortunately significant

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#225

Post by LanceH »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #182
agustamir wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to ELI5 this to myself - USPS has to fund their pensions and is forced to keep money aside for it. They are unable to make price increases to account for all this extra money that they have to keep aside since they are a public service. Their competitors UPS, FedEx are not being held to the same standard, and so USPS is losing out? And this makes a convenient excuse to show USPS as a failed org?

Almost. Non government entities don't offer the kind of unaffordable benefits such as defined benefit pensions and retiree healthcare anyway as they became more and more unaffordable. The whole deferred compensation scheme known as defined benefit pensions and retiree healthcare morphed into a way for politicians to push payroll expenses into the future so that they could get elected on "low tax" platforms. They can…

"Defined benefit" should be replaced with either "100% guaranteed returns" or "tax backed" in order to raise the red flags it should.

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#226

Post by ianleeclark »

kryogen1c wrote: post #200
throwaway5752 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I hadn't mentioned the pension, because it takes away from the immediate and much worse problem that the governing party is trying to stay in power by preventing members of the other party from voting.

> the governing party is trying to stay in power by preventing members of the other party from voting. since trump lost the popular vote in 2016, isnt your grand republican conspiracy both categorically false and totally meaningless if it werent?

How would a vote 4 years ago invalidate the very real and observable means of voter suppression we see today?

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#227

Post by input_sh »

pstuart wrote: post #195
johnchristopher wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. Wasn't that referendum settled in 2016 ? Trump is 30 years in the making. Unless there's a swing back to restoring democratic norms there's no reasons the coming years are going to be much different, no matter who is elected president.

No, this is different. Trump at that time was a "why the fuck not" to people who hated the current climate and wanted "change". He was an "unknown" as far as the governance he would provide. If Biden is able to take office I expect work to be done to try to salvage things.

Democrats like to play nice ("by the rules"), Republicans (and Trump in particular) do not.

As a consequence, it'll take a lot more than one term to undo everything that Trump has done in one term, and the way things were before Trump wasn't really peachy either.

One Trump term is going to require at least a decade to undo, and that's if it remains at just one term. Now add climate change on top of that and the future looks pretty grim.

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#228

Post by dx87 »

ericmay wrote: post #81
dexterdog wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The spam is what pays the bills so it will not get de-prioritized.

Maybe that's a sign of dysfunction. People like to rail against ad supported companies, why wouldn't we feel the same way here?

Because it's a small price to pay for being able to send mail across the country for 55 cents. If most of the funding for the USPS came from people buying stamps to send out birthday and christmas cards, they'd either have to jack up the price considerably, or they wouldn't stop by your house 6 days a week to see if you have anything to send.

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#229

Post by cft »

elliekelly wrote: post #37
cft wrote: post #7

I was in Guatemala and learned to my surprise that its national post has been disbanded. There's no functioning postal service of any kind, only private couriers.

How does that even work? By private couriers do you mean companies similar to UPS and FedEx? Or private couriers like the bike couriers in US cities? If I needed to mail documents to the other side of the country, for example, could I just drop it off at a storefront or would I have to hire one person to take the envelope the whole length of the journey?

Not even FedEx, you literally hire a guy to deliver an envelope say from Guatemala City to Xela.

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#230

Post by tigershark »

Simulacra wrote: post #213
chillwaves wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will need to find some evidence of voter fraud for mail in ballots. Many states have it as an option and it hasn't happened. The military regularly votes by mail and it hasn't happened. It's funny you open your reply about "absurdly dramatic" then lay an equally absurd claim about vote-by-mail having a problem with fraud. Your reply also conveniently ignores the historical pattern of voter suppression coming from…

But the military I think we can trust more than the Postal Service, every time we hear of a postal employee destroying or throwing away mail should be a significant enough reason that the agency is simply not ready to take this on. Maybe at the next election, maybe with a significantly more funding, transparency, and security, but not now. Mail in voting would be great, but not now. It’s far too dangerous.

Your own current president always votes by mail. If it’s fine for him why on Earth do you think that it’s not fine for everyone else?
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