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Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

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251–260 of 346 posts

Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#251

What business is it of the USPS except to transmit all mail regardless of purpose? The fact that the USPS would notice elections were being conducted is perverse.

You're missing the bigger picture. New Mail Voting Rules Moved Forward Despite USPS Officials’ Concerns About Mass Disenfranchisement ( https://www.propublica.org/article/mail-voting-usps-official... ) In a March executive order, President Donald Trump directed the Postal Service to create the new rules, including requiring states to give USPS a list of all voters eligible to receive a ballot in the mail and requirin…

[flagged]

Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#252
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical that the federal government can be saved. I suspect we will experience a process of balkanization.

balkanization is an offensive word

So is "federal" at this stage.

Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#253

I'm wondering how easy the USPS is to route around. In California's last election, there were 2,758 drop-box locations and 3,546 polling locations. In cities, these are often within walking distance. In rural areas, they might not be so convenient. So it seems like, at least for returning ballots, any USPS snafus would affect rural voters (which skew Republican) more than urban? Delivering is another question. I wond…

No, the procedures are designed to reject more votes in blue areas, just like the procedures that somehow conclude that people named Williams, John, or Washington should be dropped from the rolls for being similarly named as other people named Williams, John, or Washington.

the procedurse are not designed to reject more votes in blue areas lol being involved at the organization forr 15+ years its always so funny to hear what ppl on this site cook up; i get a good 'what are they saying now on orange site' with my co-workers

Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#254

Regardless what anyone thinks about the security of voting in the US. I'd hope that they could see how massively upending multiple states' voting systems 2 months before the midterms is a really bad idea. Even with the best intentions, implementing such a sweeping untested change so rapidly is a horrible idea. (No, I don't support it regardless, but surely even if you do you could recognize that the timeframe is way…

There is something incredibly cancerous when a certain party abhors democracy, and does everything they can to undermine the voting rights or access to groups they think won't vote for them. I would expect most Americans would see this as grotesquely anti-American, and absolutely against the principals of the country. Instead it barely makes news and is just another "get whatever advantage you can" tactic.

It's strange though, because Trump's elderly voters are the ones who vote by mail. Some observers say he would have won the incredibly close 2020 race if he hadn't discouraged mail in voting.

Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#255
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't just injecting chaos, but instead is trying to engineer an outcome. Find every mechanism and group that is likely to vote against you, and do everything possible to disenfranchise those voters. They've already gotten a ruling that ballots received after a cutoff do not count, regardless of the reason, so now they're engineering assurances that they get to choose from where ballots can be selectively delayed.

> They've already gotten a ruling that ballots received after a cutoff do not count Watson v. Republican National Committee seems to be the opposite of what you state: ballots received after election day can be counted provided they were postmarked on or before election day.

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Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean where the sitting president said they were going to try to rig the midterms? > Provide reputable sources, we can discuss it. His Truth Social account is public. Do we agree that is a reputable source? https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/trum...

The article you’ve provided clearly says Trumps dialogue is not to be taken literally. ( It does say there are other ways the election might be tinkered with, but these are for another discussion. ) I don’t find that article to be particularly worrying.

“Source please” … “I don’t like your source” Always with you people. In 2020 he personally called state election officials asking them to find votes /in his own election/ but that doesn’t worry you either. Always bad faith, always.

Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#257
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mail in ballots don’t get rid of secrecy, unless the system has been tampered with, which you could also do with illegal cameras at in-person voting etc. Anonymous envelope-within-envelope is a pretty standard way to keep secrecy, and many states do it, like mine.

> Mail in ballots don’t get rid of secrecy They mean voter buying cases, "paying you to confirm a vote for X" and see you check the card. In ballot cabins the buyer can't come with you inside the booth to confirm, so your vote has verifiable privacy/secrecy. It doesn't really solve all type of vote buying problems (like clientelism lists, etc), but removes that confirmation step.

Is that really a problem? Since there will be lots of evidence and criminals tend to fuck up quite a bit this should be well documented. Unless you think that those election fraudsters that buy tons of votes from civilians have better opsec than drug dealers and the like.

Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trump supporters used to speak up on this site. Surely they still exist but all I hear is crickets They are here. But their contributions are, let's say, not motivated by fact-based reasoning. Not surprising: it's very hard to defend what's going on in this country right now. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49545694 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49545156

1 is flagged 2 Is a statement with a link. What is wrong with it? https://news.gallup.com/poll/652523/americans-endorse-early-... Requiring all voters to provide photo identification at their voting place in order to vote Democrats: 67%

#2 isn't really addressing the argument being made.

> The fact that reputable sources were not provided to justify the need for fixes has been reputable source enough.

The the question wasn't "what do people prefer" it was "what's the evidence this is a problem."

People wanting a thing doesn't necessarily mean the thing is is a problem. But further, what the Trump admin is doing isn't the thing being polled.

What's wrong with it is that it's a non-sequitur to the conversation at hand.

What's happening is new restrictions on mail in voting. A federal registry of citizens which the post office uses to decide who does and does not get a ballot and who's ballot is allowed to arrive to the elections office.

A more responsive link would be one that shows evidence of a large amount of mail in voting fraud or even a poll that shows the majority of people support federal checks and restrictions on mail in voting (though, I'd think that's not a good reply because it isn't actually evidence).

Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#259
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can observe and accuse based on that observation. What 'sources' do you expect to see?

He’s just demanding the same kind of rigor he demands from Trump about rigged elections. Here you go RickWagoner the Republican Governor of famously liberal Wyoming smells something fishy too: https://www.codyenterprise.com/news/local/article_7f688e37-3...

Rigor is needed.

Here’s an article talking about 6000 ineligible voters in New Jersey getting ballots.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/30/new-jerseys-nonciti...

Surely you agree this is problematic, and oversight is needed?

Then extend that one step farther. It wouldn’t be fair to scrutinize only blue states like New Jersey. Red states like Wyoming should be held accountable too, right?

Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good majority of Americans want voter id. https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/28/politics/video/the-odds-voter... So a party calling for voter id is following the will of the people, while politicians opposing the will of the people are justifying the need for a fix, right?

We just spent a year hearing from some asshole about how the government was spending too much money and couldn't afford frivolities, yet we're supposed to spend money on security theatre to fix a problem that doesn't actually exist, all because some other assholes are butthurt about losing an election fair and square? Remember the people leading the charge for this are insurrectionists. They don't care about protecti…

New Jersey had 6600 hundred non citizens get ballots.

If you were writing software, would you overlook a problem like that?

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/30/new-jerseys-nonciti...

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