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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

#3
If we can't trust the government, then we need to rely on our community.

Sounds like we need communities to band together and have a group collect & deliver mail-in ballots and make sure that people in charge of counting the ballots are onboard to ensure end-to-end compliance.

I will be standing in line this year. Covid be damned. Though, my next fear is that there will be a shortage of ballots in left-leaning areas.

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

#4
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?

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

#5

If we can't trust the government, then we need to rely on our community. Sounds like we need communities to band together and have a group collect & deliver mail-in ballots and make sure that people in charge of counting the ballots are onboard to ensure end-to-end compliance. I will be standing in line this year. Covid be damned. Though, my next fear is that there will be a shortage of ballots in left-leaning areas.

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 openly partisan affiliation of the United States Post Office, so the laws haven't been updated to remove them as from the chain of custody.

EDIT: I guess the law changed in California[1] to allow other people to carry ballots, so long as the voter signs for it. But other states don't have that freedom.

[1]: https://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/voter-info/vote-by-mail.htm

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

#6
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 which way those states tend to vote.

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

#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.

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

#9

If we can't trust the government, then we need to rely on our community. Sounds like we need communities to band together and have a group collect & deliver mail-in ballots and make sure that people in charge of counting the ballots are onboard to ensure end-to-end compliance. I will be standing in line this year. Covid be damned. Though, my next fear is that there will be a shortage of ballots in left-leaning areas.

Your intentions are noble but there are very strict regulations as to who can handle ballots, the USPS being one of them.

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

#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.
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