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The Post Office Is Deactivating Mail Sorting Machines Ahead of the Election

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Re: The Post Office Is Deactivating Mail Sorting Machines Ahead of the Election

#41
post #23
post #8

My understanding is that in most areas without existing voter suppression efforts anything postmarked by election day should be counted. This will probably delay the announcement of the winner unless it is a landslide, which is not really that big of a deal unless you are a cable new channel that feels it is necessary to have 24/7 coverage of the election until the winner is announced.

It may still be helpful to delay the counting of these votes to further the narrative "look, Trump won by a large margin the first day, then all these mail in votes come in a week later and the winner is now Biden? Obvious mail fraud!"

> It may still be helpful to delay the counting of these votes to further the narrative "look, Trump won by a large margin the first day, then all these mail in votes come in a week later and the winner is now Biden? Obvious mail fraud!"

Yeah, other people are seeing that as his strategy, too:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/11/opinion/trump-election-da...

> There’s no mystery about what President Trump intends to do if he holds a lead on election night in November. He’s practically broadcasting it.

> First, he’ll claim victory. Then, having spent most of the year denouncing vote-by-mail as corrupt, fraudulent and prone to abuse, he’ll demand that authorities stop counting mail-in and absentee ballots. He’ll have teams of lawyers challenging counts and ballots across the country.

> He also seems to be counting on having the advantage of mail slowdowns, engineered by the recently installed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. Fewer pickups and deliveries could mean more late-arriving ballots and a better shot at dismissing votes before they’re even opened, especially if the campaign has successfully sued to block states from extending deadlines. We might even see a Brooks Brothers riot or two, where well-heeled Republican operatives stage angry and voluble protests against ballot counts and recounts.

> If Trump is leading on election night, in other words, there’s a good chance he’ll try to disrupt and delegitimize the counting process. That way, if Joe Biden pulls ahead in the days (or weeks) after voting ends — if we experience a “blue shift” like the one in 2018, in which the Democratic majority in the House grew as votes came in — the president will have given himself grounds to reject the outcome as “fake news.”

> The only way to prevent this scenario, or at least, rob it of the oxygen it needs to burn, is to deliver an election night lead to Biden. This means voting in person. No, not everyone will be able to do that. But if you plan to vote against Trump and can take appropriate precautions, then some kind of hand delivery — going to the polls or bringing your mail-in ballot to a “drop box” — will be the best way to protect your vote from the president’s concerted attempt to undermine the election for his benefit.

Re: The Post Office Is Deactivating Mail Sorting Machines Ahead of the Election

#43
post #8

My understanding is that in most areas without existing voter suppression efforts anything postmarked by election day should be counted. This will probably delay the announcement of the winner unless it is a landslide, which is not really that big of a deal unless you are a cable new channel that feels it is necessary to have 24/7 coverage of the election until the winner is announced.

That is not true, see https://www.newsweek.com/these-states-invalidate-mail-ballot...

Re: The Post Office Is Deactivating Mail Sorting Machines Ahead of the Election

#44
post #8

My understanding is that in most areas without existing voter suppression efforts anything postmarked by election day should be counted. This will probably delay the announcement of the winner unless it is a landslide, which is not really that big of a deal unless you are a cable new channel that feels it is necessary to have 24/7 coverage of the election until the winner is announced.

How long do they wait for the mails to arrive?

Re: The Post Office Is Deactivating Mail Sorting Machines Ahead of the Election

#45

I know this is an annoying thing to say, but: This is an argument for not having mail delivery being controlled by elected politicians.

> This is an argument for not having mail delivery being controlled by elected politicians.

That wouldn't solve anything. If it's not controlled by elected politicians, it could still be controlled by others with political or ideological motivations, and it would be harder to hold those people accountable.

The real solution is political checks and balances and more oversight.

Re: The Post Office Is Deactivating Mail Sorting Machines Ahead of the Election

#46

We do just in time shipping on top of the post office, so have visibility here. We're definitely seeing mail being delivered more slowly, with more delays. At the same time, it's a question of degree, not a major dismantling of the post office. I'd guess 90% of our packages are still arriving within a day of when they were supposed to. For context, I run bottomless.com, YCW19. We're shipping hundreds of packages from…

You can do a great public service by publishing a metric of postal mail delivery timeliness from across the country.

That sounds like a great way to piss off someone high up in the post office/local delivery people at the post office.

I would be reluctant to post such a thing under my name - only aggregated and anonymized data.

Re: The Post Office Is Deactivating Mail Sorting Machines Ahead of the Election

#47
post #22
post #10

If only there was a communication medium which travelled at the speed of light and 100 years of research in information theory and cryptography which would allow secure auditable verifiable elections from the comfort of home. Nah lets use pre-telegraph technology.

Do not ever allow an election for who gets to control the nukes be decided by an e-vote. I don’t want Boaty McBoatface to be the president.

That's exactly my point. This article is critiquing ancient technology which can be tampered with by the ruling government that limits democratic involvement without proposing obvious remedies involving superior technology. The hidden subtext here through the intellectual dishonesty of its exclusion is that this technology would allow a little bit TOO much involvement from the electorate which is contrary to the entire design of American representative democracy which is purpose built to prop up candidates captured by big money corporate donors and PACs.

Re: The Post Office Is Deactivating Mail Sorting Machines Ahead of the Election

#48
post #2

How about we don’t have a mail in vote and just make the day a holiday.

We've actively lobbied for that for years--Republicans have refused, because they know that the people working low-income jobs whose managers will not let them off to go vote tend to lean Democratic. There are some states where the best we've managed is being allowed to take "unpaid" time off to go vote, with the caveat that your employer cannot fire you for doing so. Some states don't even have that much. Guess whic…

Are the Republicans really that strong in CA, NY, IL? If this is true, why not to do it at city level, surely there are not that many Republicans in the San Francisco, Seattle, or NYC city councils?

Re: The Post Office Is Deactivating Mail Sorting Machines Ahead of the Election

#49
post #40
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is untrue - different states have different standards by which mail in ballots will be counted. A postmark on or before Election Day is no guarantee your vote will be tallied, depending on where you live.

And in places like California which take a long time to count ballots they usually announce results and the election is effectvely over before everything is counted.

Most places will make the announcement once the outstanding ballots are extremely unlikely to change the result of the election.

So if Candidate A is winning 500,000 to 400,000 but 150,000 ballots are still outstanding then they'll make the call for Candidate A because there is no reason to think that the outstanding ballots will be that much different in distribution than the already counted ballots. This can be adjusted based on historical precedent as well, if you know that late counting precincts tend to vote in a certain way then you can make educated guesses as to when the results of that precinct will no longer make a difference. Even after adding in some extra margin for safety you can call the race.

The tricky part is when a race is really close and you have to count every ballot. This is when waiting 3-5 days for the mail to finish trickling in is going to cause cable news anchors to lose sleep.

Re: The Post Office Is Deactivating Mail Sorting Machines Ahead of the Election

#50

I know this is an annoying thing to say, but: This is an argument for not having mail delivery being controlled by elected politicians.

> This is an argument for not having mail delivery being controlled by elected politicians. Which is not the same thing as having mail delivery being controlled by private companies, who are even less answerable to the public than elected politicians.

Then who is left? Churches? Foreign governments?
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