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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

#51

Post by nthj »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #38
nthj wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, newish customer here. I’m in the 10%—my bag is somewhere halfway across the country, and USPS hasn’t posted an update in a week now. I’ll need to supplement with Instacart, which kinda breaks the abstraction. I totally appreciate that USPS isn’t in your control. Cost isn’t really a constraint for me, but running out of coffee is. I just checked and I don’t see a way to switch to FedEx or UPS for an additional ch…

I don't want you to be without coffee either, but can't help but wonder if switching to UPS is exactly what Louis DeJoy wants you to do?

Point taken. I have been buffering supplies since February, and anywhere else I can support shipping delays with a bit of additional planning, but coffee and eggs are I think the two places in my lifestyle still coupled to just-in-time delivery. I have caffeine supplements stocked as a backup, but that misses out on the ritual.

It’s been an interesting year, kind of like playing Factorio but in real life.

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

#52

Post by ardy42 »

shiado wrote: post #47
dwhit wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 enti…

This isn't a technical problem that can be solved by technical solutions, and even technical solutions can be tampered with.

Everyone understands paper ballot technology. Very, very few people are going to understand a technically "superior" e-voting system that has all the right characteristics. I'd rather have the system that can be accurately understood verified by the public than one where the public has to completely trust a few dozen experts.

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

#53

Post by tomohawk »

Mail in voting is going to make the hanging chads in Florida in 2000 seem like a nice memory.

In the best of times, the postal service was striving to deliver 96% of the ballots. Why would we sign up for automatic 4% disenfranchisement?

It is common for 20% or more of mailed in ballots to be invalidated for one reason or another. And that's just when its a normal year with absentee ballots as the ones in the mail.

Changing the election system during a pandemic with only months prior to the election is just asking for it. This sort of thing takes years to plan in the best of times.

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

#54

Post by ardy42 »

jandrese wrote: 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.

> My understanding is that in most areas without existing voter suppression efforts anything postmarked by election day should be counted.

What happens when the postmark is not legible? I don't read postmarks often, but a good chunk of the time I can't make out the full date.

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

#55

Post by frobozz »

rabidrat wrote: post #4
zalkota wrote: post #2

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

How does that help when some places have only one polling station for 100k people? And there is a global pandemic, so we don't want 100k people congregating in the same crowded space?

Do that, and set up a sensible network of polling places with appropriate opening hours so that everyone can vote easily without 100k people all turning up at the exact same time and trying to squeeze into the same crowded space.

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

#56

Post by wnissen »

jandrese wrote: 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.

Postal officials in Brooklyn testified that ballots had only a 40% chance of getting the postmark from the day they were mailed. That's a big deal to me. The whole thing was made much worse by the fact that election officials only ordered the ballots from the printer two days before the election.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/six-weeks-later-ele...

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

#57

Post by seizethecheese »

huy-nguyen wrote: post #29
seizethecheese wrote: post #17

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.

Agreed. We are thinking about it. I really don’t want us to get involved in a partisan debate, but presenting the facts might inform the discussion overall.

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

#58

Post by labster »

happytoexplain wrote: post #16
labster wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't incite criminal behavior. Under law, only certain people are authorized to deliver mail-in ballots -- typically family, elections staff, and postal workers. Ballots have chain of custody issues, and it would be terribly easy for one party to organize a collection drive, look at the sender, and decide to save or recycle based on party affiliation of the voter. The thing that changed this year is the openl…

>Please don't incite criminal behavior This is a gross oversimplification of morality. Regardless, I agree what the parent is proposing wouldn't work well.

I don't see a moral claim being made at all in my post. Morals are a completely different dimension than government law. I think you're conflating the two.

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

#59

Post by valbaca »

pandaman wrote: post #48
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Seattle has mail-in ballots. So we don't need the day off

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

#60

Post by valbaca »

zalkota wrote: post #2

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

In-person voting is being stifled as well. Look at the Georgia primary.

https://www.npr.org/2020/06/09/873054620/long-lines-voting-m...

Mail-in ballots are so good that once you do them, you'll be dumbfounded at why this isn't the absolute standard country-wide. Like I can't describe how simple it is and nice to be able to research candidates on your own with the full ballot in front of you. Using phones and such is prohibited at in-person voting.

The other advantage is you aren't fully limited by the mail. There are drop-off bins at locations like public libraries.

We trust our mail to do nearly everything official with the government: your ID, vehicle registration, selective service number, passport, IRS PIN, jury summons, US census etc ALL come through the mail and ONLY through the mail, but for voting we don't??? why?!?

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