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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

#271

Post by isoskeles »

callmeal wrote: post #220
isoskeles wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're disregarding "congress" and "administration", I'm not sure how you propose this is a "Republican" problem at all. Republicans where? Republican... citizens? Republican postal workers? Which Republicans have caused USPS to has a history of financial issues? Just from this graph, it looks like since 1960, the only time they ran a surplus was 1994 - 2004: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/USPS…

>Which Republicans have caused USPS to has a history of financial issues? The ones who in 2006 forced the USPS to pre-fund their retirement obligations. https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/financials/annual-reports/... >>Unlike any other public or private entity, under a 2006 law, the U.S. Postal Service must pre-fund retiree health benefits. We must pay today for benefits that will not be paid out until some future da…

> congress

I thought we weren’t allowed to use that word when arguing with you.

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

#272

Post by xhkkffbf »

pwg wrote: post #172
xhkkffbf wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voting in person the old fashioned way for all but those with a good physical excuse seems to be the best way to maintain the integrity of our voting process. Yes, in-person voting has the potential for fraud, but mail-in voting has all of the same problems and more. It's hard to find a mechanism for fraud that applies to in-person but not mail in. Furthermore, the issues with COVID seem overblown. I've waited in lin…

> I've waited in line to vote, but the lines were never longer than the lines at my local supermarket on Saturday morning. You've been very lucky then. For Obama's first term election, the lines at my polling place were across the room, out the door, down the hallway, out the building door, and a good distance down the block (i.e., easily a few hundred or more waiting in line to get their chance to cast their vote).…

No. In my case, the local supermarket's lines are terrible. You're a lucky one. In my neighborhood, people wait 30-45 minutes to get in the supermarket EVERY week. Most are moving to systems like Instacart when they can afford it.

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

#273

Post by xhkkffbf »

dragonwriter wrote: post #166
xhkkffbf wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voting in person the old fashioned way for all but those with a good physical excuse seems to be the best way to maintain the integrity of our voting process. Yes, in-person voting has the potential for fraud, but mail-in voting has all of the same problems and more. It's hard to find a mechanism for fraud that applies to in-person but not mail in. Furthermore, the issues with COVID seem overblown. I've waited in lin…

> I've waited in line to vote, but the lines were never longer than the lines at my local supermarket on Saturday morning As is disproportionately the case on HN, you are probably a relatively privileged individual, living in a relatively privileged community. Even if not, you should be aware that generalizing from your personal experience is not reliable.

Oh please. People across the country are going to the stores 2-3 times a week. They're waiting in lines at banks and coffee shops. If they can wait there, they can wait to vote every 2-4 years.

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

#274

Post by xhkkffbf »

srj wrote: post #67
xhkkffbf wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voting in person the old fashioned way for all but those with a good physical excuse seems to be the best way to maintain the integrity of our voting process. Yes, in-person voting has the potential for fraud, but mail-in voting has all of the same problems and more. It's hard to find a mechanism for fraud that applies to in-person but not mail in. Furthermore, the issues with COVID seem overblown. I've waited in lin…

I voted by mail in Seattle for years and never had an issue or even heard of one. The ballot goes in a tamper-evident envelope, sealed within the mailing envelope. You also get online tracking to know your ballot was received and processed.

Please pay better attention and read the news occasionally:

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seven-charged-in-v...

And here's a story from a postal worker committing voting fraud. It was published in the Seattle Times even though it occurred in WV.

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/west-virgin...

This took me 10 seconds to find.

Tamper resistant envelopes don't stop fraud. They just stop tampering. The real problem is people making up 1000s of fake names (or borrowing real ones) and then filling out the ballots for their favorite candidate. Then they dutifully seal them in a tamper-resistant envelope which preserves the vote for their favorite candidate.

Open your eyes and your ears.

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

#275

Post by epistasis »

bboston7 wrote: post #75
epistasis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose you were right, and a private service could outcompete USPS. Why haven't they already? There's many delivery services that go to residential homes now, and tons of spam mailers that would love to save a few dollars in those areas where a private service could do it more cheaply. I'd be shocked that if UPS or FedEx thought they could be more profitable than USPS they wouldn't start competing.

It's illegal to compete with USPS on normal letter delivery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes

Thank you, I did not know this! Also did not know that postal service was envisioned in the constitution.

I would think that if such services were thought to be of federal powers, that many more bedrock services that are essential provide to all of society, such as internet service, would also be written in today if the founders had started in 2000.

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

#276

Post by xhkkffbf »

kevingadd wrote: post #68
xhkkffbf wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voting in person the old fashioned way for all but those with a good physical excuse seems to be the best way to maintain the integrity of our voting process. Yes, in-person voting has the potential for fraud, but mail-in voting has all of the same problems and more. It's hard to find a mechanism for fraud that applies to in-person but not mail in. Furthermore, the issues with COVID seem overblown. I've waited in lin…

Voting and going to the grocery store are pretty different in multiple ways. For one thing, we give people exactly one day for in-person voting, and they don't get the day off from work - so they probably have a total of maybe 5 non-work hours available to them during which polling places are open, they go to one, stand in line with thousands of other people, then walk into a crowded place, interact up close with pol…

I think you're comparing the voting procedures of the past with the grocery aisles of today. If we sterilize the stores, we can do the same with the voting equipment.

In my town, they've moved to paper ballots for audibility. This is also great for mitigating disease transmission because each person only touches their own paper ballot.

There's no reason why each polling place can be brought to the same level of danger as a local grocery. It won't be hard.

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

#277

Post by throwaway5752 »

phkahler wrote: post #233
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.

How are dems more likely to vote by mail? And what are the percentages for each party?

Short answer is the effect should be even overall, but what matters happens at state and district levels, so you could even disenfranchise more people of your own party on the net and still end up with an improved electoral outcome.

You could steal the vote from 500k Republicans in just Alabama and 150k Democrats spread across Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania and have a net swing of 0 EC votes lost and 50 EC votes gained for Republicans.

You just have to create policies (like closing polling place, making vote by mail difficult, create voter id rules that exclude college students) that have small partisan differentials in a few swing states, which is why the greatest effort and impact is in urban centers in the midwest (followed by Latinx populations in the southwest like AZ and NM, and African American populations in the southeast like FL and GA).

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

#278

Post by xhkkffbf »

specialist wrote: post #160
xhkkffbf wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voting in person the old fashioned way for all but those with a good physical excuse seems to be the best way to maintain the integrity of our voting process. Yes, in-person voting has the potential for fraud, but mail-in voting has all of the same problems and more. It's hard to find a mechanism for fraud that applies to in-person but not mail in. Furthermore, the issues with COVID seem overblown. I've waited in lin…

It'd be more helpful if you provided specifics. Also, conflating postal balloting and COVID-19 is inappropriate. In principle, you should advocate for the Australian Ballot, which is private voting and public counting. The election integrity gold standard is casting ballots at poll sites which are tabulated onsite the moment the polls close and the results shared immediately. Some of the larger identified risks of po…

I can't go into a long list of ways to attack the various systems. But if you go above, I link to two different stories. Mail in voting is just much easier to hack.

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

#280

Post by minerjoe »

dane-pgp wrote: post #214
minerjoe wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I voted in the first election in the US to ever use the Dibold [1] [2] machines, in Atlanta Georgia. It was obvious to anyone with a single honest neuron that there was no way to trust these machines. I've never voted since. There is no point in pretending like the system has credibility or accountability. [1] https://columbusfreepress.com/article/diebold-indicted-its-s... [2] https://whowhatwhy.org/2020/05/27/touchs…

I didn't downvote you, but I suspect that some people reacted negatively to your strategy of "don't vote, then the people with power will feel so embarrassed at the lack of credibility of the system that they will work to regain people's trust". Also, if the comment above is your "toned down" wording, I'm glad I didn't read the original version, or I probably would have downvoted you.

Who are you quoting there? Putting a few too many words in my mouth.

To many of us, the system has lost all cedibility, and voting is signalling just the opposite of that. Nothing about embarrassing anyone. No way to regain people trust at this point. We're too far gone.

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