US post office carriers "forced to work fewer hours," leaving "buckets of mail"

Your first sentence is essentially what gerrymandering is. Sadly, Republicans have spent decades doing this and closing down polling places in non-GOP friendly districts [1][2][3][4].

Here are some recent facts I tied together based on the current state and Trump's actions. Trump doesn't want mail-in voting because he knows that it will result in more democrats voting and him likely losing the election. Every decision he's made about the USPS has been with that concept in mind. He even said in an interview on Fox news last month that if mail in voting is allowed you'll never see another Republican in office again. He knows it. Everyone in politics knows it. The right will never admit they know this, and will look for any and every excuse to hold back the USPS without directly saying that its because they don't want more democrats than republicans voting.

With mail-in voting being accepted in a majority of states, and even set as the primary method for a few with COVID present, it really screws things up for the GOP. Couple that with Trump's gamble that convincing his voters the virus is no big deal will get them to the polls, while the scaredy cat democrats will stay home. So he spent a very long time building up this giant "virus hoax" to calm his masses. He is simultaneously trying to train them to believe that mail-in voting is fraud, even though he, himself does so, as have many, many of his voters, historically.

It worked. But what he didn't account for was states creating blanket acceptances of mail-in voting applications. That instantly turns the tables, because not only does it undo the removal of polling places, but it also allows the democrats (and the GOP, if they so choose) to vote from the safety and comfort of their homes while avoiding lines, saving time, and not risking COVID. His supporters, however, will be going to polling places in full force, in what will likely be a very bad time for the country as COVID starts to rear its face again between flu-season and school openings (especially in red states that are in denial and have entirely in-person classes).

So then, what happens, is a ton of his voters are going to be against voting by mail, and most will have not applied to do so, forcing them to go to the ballots, in what will most likely be a time that the pandemic is gaining speed. His advisors basically laid out the future for him of his silly comments, and where they were leading. So, in recent weeks, you've seen him compliment "absentee voting", trying to making it a completely separate thing from "mail-in voting", as not to look like an incompetent liar to his voters. But he knows his advantage still lies at the polling places, so he is simultaneously trying to hinder the USPS from delivering ballots. The number of mail-in voting applications for democrats FAR surpasses those for republicans, so while it may cost him a few votes, he is betting that it will cost democrats so many that his supporters who do show up will be able to tip the scales. He is also taking the approach of preparing to call the election invalid due to the amount of mail-in voting, should he lose.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-locations/so...

[2] https://civilrights.org/democracy-diverted/

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/02/texas-pollin...

[4] https://www.governing.com/topics/politics/sl-polling-place-c...

I agree that all voting locations should be open, and I see now reason to close voting locations because of Covid when Home Depot and Whole Foods can be open. I actually don't see why we can't utilize government resources to open more voting locations to facilitate social distancing.

Prefunding medical pensions is not the reason for their cash flow problem:

> In addition, with respect to financial reporting, here are the key figures for 2019:

> Healthcare benefits paid out of the Benefit Fund: $3.7 billion.

> Normal costs scheduled to be paid into the Benefit Fund to cover current year’s current employees’ retiree healthcare cost accruals: $3.775 billion.

> Amortization payments scheduled to be made into the fund: $789 million.

> Overall net loss for the year: $8.8 billion.

> The math just doesn’t work to blame retiree healthcare contributions for the USPS’s losses. The amount they are recording on their P&L for retiree healthcare costs (which, again, they aren’t paying out in cash) — $4.564 billion — is only moderately more ($800 - $900 million, depending on rounding) than the amount that they would be paying out directly for pay-as-you-go benefits had the PAEA never been implemented. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2020/04/14/post-office-p...

And I actually do see this as a "because it's not A it shows it is therefore B" type argument. When the USPS runs at a deficit, tax payers ultimately are the ones that have to bail it out. That goes against the principal necessitating stamps in the first place: individuals who don't place extra cost to the USPS end up paying more than their share and subsidize individuals who do cost the USPS extra.

It is sad to see how party politics get in the way of solving problems in the USA. Your whole reply is worded from the standpoint of someone who is clearly against the GOP and - given the practical reality of the de-facto two-party system in the USA - most likely planning to vote for the DNC candidate. From that standpoint you come to the conclusion that the GOP is planning to use the reliability problems with mail-in voting to contend the election results in case their candidate were to loose the election.

Then there are those who do not support the DNC - which is not the same as stating they support the GOP - who claim that it is actually the DNC which intends to contend the results in case their candidate looses on base of mail-in voting being thwarted. Add to that the fact that the USPS workers union has voiced its explicit support for the DNC candidate [1] and the story gets even more muddled.

Meanwhile Fauci has stated he sees no problems in people going to polling stations [2] which should give rise to doubts about the reasoning behind the urgency of mail-in voting.

I am not an American and as such consider myself to be an interested bystander in this drama. What I can state with certainty is that this type of manoeuvring is extremely unlikely to happen in my country of birth (the Netherlands) but is in some ways comparable to the situation in the country where I currently live (Sweden). The Swedish voting system has come under criticism from the OSCE [3] partly due to irregularities in the way ballot forms are being distributed - forms for specific parties have a tendency to 'get lost' in the mail or otherwise end up missing at the ballot stations, often to be found in garbage containers or dumped in some ditch somewhere. There are other criticisms but this one comes the closes to the current conundrum with mail-in voting in the USA. Sweden accepted OSCE inspectors to watch the election procedures, it remains to be seen what the country will do with their recommendations. It would be enlightening to have an external, non-partisan organisation do the same with the coming elections in the USA. Which organisation that would be I do not know, it will be hard if not impossible to find an American organisation which is truly neutral towards all parties and probably even harder to find a foreign one which is neutral towards the USA as a whole.

[1] https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/512128-union-represent...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2020/08/07/fauci-w...

[3] https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/6/2/403760.pdf

For some historical context, IDs cost money in most states and there's no national identification system. So if you implement voting ids, all it does is end up being voter suppression because generally the poor cannot afford to get a driver's license or cannot afford to drive therefore don't have a license. State Ids have a similar issue.

Historically, voter ID laws have been associated with disenfranchisement.