41 ms·

Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

330 points by AndrewBissell 6y ago

addicted 6y ago
Whatever USPS’s long term issues may be, is the middle of a pandemic the right time to “resolve” it? Is depriving people of medicines and mail and making them wait weeks so they receive urgent communications and packages the right solution right now? Wouldn’t it make far more sense to put in the short term Money during an emergency and try and figure out the long term solution afterwards? Unless, of course, your goal Is a Hail Mary to cause chaos and confusion so you might win an otherwise increasingly unwinnable Election.
deeblering4 6y ago
Isn’t america great again?
jayd16 6y ago
Just as we start to receive vote by mail forms (at least here in California).
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  You can return your mail-in ballot to a drop slot / drop box at your local election office, which saves them postage fees and gives you more certainty it arrived. If you can’t spare the time then the mail still works, but for those that are worried, it’s allowed.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    The location of the drop box for my precinct wasn't included in the state's list, but it ended up being a slot at one of the service windows at the city clerks office. Quick and easy.
  - jypepin 6y ago
    I can't vote, but i can drive. Is it legal to drop someone else's ballot to the local election office? I'll drop it for people who can't go.
    - olliej 6y ago
      In Republican states there are many laws in place to make helping people vote extraordinarily challenging.
    - floatingatoll 6y ago
      Varies per state.
    - evan_ 6y ago
      That’s derisively known as ballot harvesting and the legality varies. Republicans generally say it’s cheating and try to pass laws to ban it, except when they do it themselves. https://twitter.com/libsinamerica/status/1261069338427211782?s=21 https://twitter.com/libsinamerica/status/1261069338427211782...
    - Simulacra 6y ago
      Or toss it?
gray_-_wolf 6y ago
Are there some actual studies stating that privatized mail office would be cheaper/more efficient/better service? Or is this just attempt at money grab?
- cenal 6y ago
  How can it not be less expensive? The private companies don’t have to offer/fund the insane pension benefits that public sector employees get. The public sector pension scandal is insane.
  - wwright 6y ago
    Not giving employees benefits does not necessarily lead to a better service
    - orev 6y ago
      The USPS is uniquely shackled by a ridiculous requirement to prefund 75 years worth of pension and medical benefits, and is also barred from raising rates the help pay for it. There is no way any organization can operate that way.
      - lotsofpulp 6y ago
        You are correct the problem is that they are now allowed to set prices, but incorrect in that USPS is not required to prefund 75 years of pension and medical benefits. It is required to save for accrued benefits. Which is how it should be. If you purchased, today, a $2,000 annuity starting when you are 65, wouldn’t you want the insurance company to start saving for it now? https://www.cnbc.com/2011/10/24/the-truth-about-the-post-offices-financial-mess.html https://www.cnbc.com/2011/10/24/the-truth-about-the-post-off... > Although accounting rules require the postal service to calculate future liabilities, including those for projected future employees, the law only requires pre-funding of obligations to actual current and past employees.
        6y ago
newbie789 6y ago
I've had significant delays up here in the Pacific Northwest. A friend of mine mailed me a box of comic books over two weeks ago and it's still in limbo. I just want to read Green Lantern Corps. :(
- bredren 6y ago
  My pal is a mail carrier in Portland. A few weeks ago the postmaster general ordered a normalized practice of overtime use to clear large amounts of mail from some bins to cease. Regularly, employees would catch up on mail processing this way. Mail has been piling up ever since. From what my pal told us, didn’t make sense given how mail is handled but it is also not unusual for unexplained top down orders in USPS to be given. Questioning USPS management does not make you a valued team member—-most people are focused on making sure their vacation time gets granted or trying to get successful bids for new routes or workflows. From many stories about the workings of USPS, it sounds to me like there are widespread inefficiencies in the post office. (And as an aside, there are definitely USPS employees that would not have jobs without the powerful union that keeps them there. Stuff that never would be forgiven in private enterprise happens all of the time.) However, this sudden action from the PM general is not the way to bring about change, it is just causing an organization with a lot of operational debt to redline.
- newbie789 6y ago
  Guess there's not a lot of DC fans on here, must be a Marvel crowd! In all seriousness, I live with a type 1 diabetic and I'm really, really glad that her insulin isn't delivered by mail anymore. This particular instance of fuckery could have literally killed my best friend. It's mind boggling to me that this is being treated so brazenly as a political football. I'm sure there are inefficiencies and bottlenecks that could be addressed, but literally stopping the mail to illustrate some notion about how the market could somehow create a better solution is reckless and frankly pretty disgusting. If this turns out to be somehow punitive because a certain somebody doesn't like mail-in voting, I'll be incredibly unsurprised.
morpheuskafka 6y ago
Would have appreciated some transparency on this before a shipped a $1K ecommerce package by Priority Mail last week. I read the official notice on the website and it just said PM was gonna be extended by one day. Then after it arrived in the destination ZIP they bumped it out another day, and now it is showing Alert status with no scans. Really unprofessional.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
cft 6y ago
I was in Guatemala and learned to my surprise that its national post has been disbanded. There's no functioning postal service of any kind, only private couriers.
- elliekelly 6y ago
  How does that even work? By private couriers do you mean companies similar to UPS and FedEx? Or private couriers like the bike couriers in US cities? If I needed to mail documents to the other side of the country, for example, could I just drop it off at a storefront or would I have to hire one person to take the envelope the whole length of the journey?
  - jt94mf90d 6y ago
    The cartels could step in as a national postal carrier. Set postage agreements, and postage rates for garanteed services.
  - cft 6y ago
    Not even FedEx, you literally hire a guy to deliver an envelope say from Guatemala City to Xela.
bkor 6y ago
> Amid this increase, sudden policy changes instituted to cut costs by new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Trump donor who was appointed in May, Interesting how that's possible. Corona delayed things in Netherlands, but seems they dealt with it smartly. Those delays didn't last that long as well. It does align with the suggestion that voting by mail is problematic, though seems like a created problem.
- graeme 6y ago
  It would appear to be the goal: scuttle the post system to disrupt voting by mail.
nemothekid 6y ago
Incredibly frustrating to get mail by USPS over the past couple months and even more frustrating to know this is an intentional kneecapping of the USPS by the administration in order "prove" government services are inefficient to privatize the USPS
- betweeds 6y ago
  Boy, it sure is coincidental timing that Trump appointed a new Postmaster General two months ago that immediately changed policies to prohibit overtime needed to get mail delivered, just as we're about to have an election that will see large parts of the country having to vote by mail. Now if only Trump could get his supporters to not rely on voting by mail, such as by playing up the message that the Coronavirus is not a big deal and that everyone just needs to go back to work and school and that they'll be fine by the time they need to get out and vote in person.
  - jrobn 6y ago
    You’re being downvoted because it’s the inconvenient truth.
- skybrian 6y ago
  Demand is way up due to the pandemic. Amazon hired 175,000 temporary workers to keep up with demand [1]. All the Trump adminstration had to do to cause a problem was not hire any extra help and disallow overtime. [1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazon-reaches-1-million-workers-as-pandemic-pushes-total-up-11596136565 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazon-reaches-1-million-w...
  - arp242 6y ago
    A business[1] getting in to financial trouble because of massive increase in customers is indeed a curious affair. [1]: Which the USPS is not, but let's be flexible with the term.
- throwaway5752 6y ago
  Its not a point about government effectiveness or efficiency. They kneecapped the USPS when they forced prefunding of pension liabilities (https://www.cnbc.com/2011/10/24/the-truth-about-the-post-offices-financial-mess.html https://www.cnbc.com/2011/10/24/the-truth-about-the-post-off...). They had more legislative leverage prior to 2018, so they could have done all this much earlier. It is not possible to honestly discuss this in a meaningful way without acknowledging it's 3 months out from a presidential election. It the closest thing they can legally do to suppress voting turnout, and it's a deliberate strategy to win the election by reducing the franchise. This isn't in a vacuum either, it's a coordinated part of a national legislative strategy (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/04/exposing-alec-how-conservative-backed-state-laws-are-all-connected/255869/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/04/exposin...). It is coordinated across at the state and federal levels, and across branches. You can see here with the intentional degrading of the USPS immediately prior to a national election, at a state level with polling place closures (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-locations/southern-us-states-have-closed-1200-polling-places-in-recent-years-rights-group-idUSKCN1VV09J https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-locations/so...) and photo id laws (https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-sheet https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-...), and constellation of Republican judicial appointments coordinated with specially prepared and crafted legal challenges by Republican AGs and private parties at state and circuit levels. This is how it's being done: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/leonard-leo-federalists-society-courts https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/...
ericmay 6y ago
Are they de-prioritizing all the spam and useless pre-sort stuff? That would be the first order of business for me.
- salusinarduis 6y ago
  I think it's the opposite, by design. This administration installed a loyalist (with extreme conflicts of interest) to de-legitimize the postal service prior to the election, which will largely be held by mail.
  - Simulacra 6y ago
    Every administration does this, to advance their own agenda. Are you surprised?
    - salusinarduis 6y ago
      The injustices of the past should not be considered license for the future. We must call out corruption while we still have the freedom to do so.
- dexterdog 6y ago
  The spam is what pays the bills so it will not get de-prioritized.
  - ericmay 6y ago
    Maybe that's a sign of dysfunction. People like to rail against ad supported companies, why wouldn't we feel the same way here?
    - dx87 6y ago
      Because it's a small price to pay for being able to send mail across the country for 55 cents. If most of the funding for the USPS came from people buying stamps to send out birthday and christmas cards, they'd either have to jack up the price considerably, or they wouldn't stop by your house 6 days a week to see if you have anything to send.
skybrian 6y ago
Here's a story about a smaller incident in Berkeley: https://www.berkeleyside.com/2020/07/31/covid-19-us-post-office-closed-berkeley-ca-workers-union https://www.berkeleyside.com/2020/07/31/covid-19-us-post-off...
Bombthecat 6y ago
You need to check out who is in charge of usps..
- olliej 6y ago
  You mean the trump appointed anti-usps sycophant? That is significantly invested in private usps competitors right? :-/
  - scrollbar 6y ago
    Not sure why this comment is downvoted, seems pretty accurate https://www.salon.com/2020/05/07/top-trump-donor-who-gave-more-than-2-million-to-the-gop-picked-to-run-postal-service/ https://www.salon.com/2020/05/07/top-trump-donor-who-gave-mo...
    - throwaway2048 6y ago
      Because any suggestion that its the republicans behind political malfeasance on HN quickly gets down voted, you are only permitted to talk about "congress" or "the administration" in abstract.
annoyingnoob 6y ago
Even the Pony Express failed financially and as far as I can tell those guys were the definition of grit. But technology and the dangers of the times got the best of them.
- faizshah 6y ago
  If the USPS fails financially it just means we pay for it through taxes like every other government service. But in this case the USPS isn’t falling victim to technology it’s falling victim to political sabotage: https://ips-dc.org/how-congress-manufactured-a-postal-crisis-and-how-to-fix-it/ https://ips-dc.org/how-congress-manufactured-a-postal-crisis...
  - annoyingnoob 6y ago
    While what you are saying is true, the USPS has very tall requirements. I wouldn't be so fast to discount the effects of technology. https://www.statista.com/statistics/320234/mail-volume-of-the-usps/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/320234/mail-volume-of-th...
- smt88 6y ago
  USPS is not failing financially. It's the victim of a long-gestating assassination and a refusal by the current admin to adapt it to the Covid era of high demand.
xzlzx 6y ago
Among other reasons, this is in big part happening due to a large push toward mail-in voting come the next Presidential election. It seems that certain political entities think they will suffer at the poles due to the fact that it’ll be easier to vote. easier voting -> more votes -> undesirable outcomes
- nxc18 6y ago
  The craziest thing about the whole situations is there actually isn’t much evidence that vote by mail favors republicans; and yet they’re willing to degrade postal service to a country more reliant on it than ever, just for a small hope of electoral advantage. Edit: article in case anyone isn’t convinced (I was skeptical at first, given the tone of the discussion): https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/us/politics/vote-by-mail.html/ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/us/politics/vote-by-mail....
  - AndrewBissell 6y ago
    There are other reasons they want to disband the post office beyond just its impact on voting. If they replace it with private entities it becomes easier to surveil and censor the mail, for instance.
    - leesalminen 6y ago
      The USPS takes an image of the front of the envelope for every first class letter sent in the USA. It's a safe bet that they're doing OCR of the recipient/sender addresses and store it in a database. USPS Informed Delivery is just a customer-facing result of that long standing program.
      - AndrewBissell 6y ago
        Yes, the goal of surveillance is already being advanced in many ways under the existing structure of the USPS.
      - mindslight 6y ago
alextheparrot 6y ago
This is problematic to voting in the same way closing polling sites is, framed as cost cutting or inefficiency reduction with the intention of reducing access to a subset of the population. This is just frustration, but the fact that we could pass a massive defense bill (again, I know), but are unable to fund basic services shows the integrity of our government. Moreover, it shows the culpability of most of the elected officials, from both parties. We don’t need a labor movement, we need a people’s movement.
- claudeganon 6y ago
  > Moreover, it shows the culpability of most of the elected officials, from both parties. It shows that after the labor movement was destroyed, the only material base for the Democratic Party was to go looking for money from the same people who give it to Republicans. Saying we don’t need a labor movement is equivalent to saying “we don’t need a political party that relies on support from workers.”
  - alextheparrot 6y ago
    If I may, I'll add a correction to your quoted statement to give my intended meaning: “we don’t need a political party that relies only on support from workers.” The subdivision and segregation of American political movements has been an incredibly useful tool in defusing them. The labor, civil rights, suffrage, identity movements, were powerful, but the lack of intersectionality made it so that once policy victories were achieved the tenor died down. My comment was focused on how this was a fundamental weakness. For example, is voting by mail a "labor" issue? I would say no, and even if this opinion is generally wrong it shows the subdivision that occurs. There is no modern suffrage movement in the same way as existed in the early part of the 1900s. The idea of a "people's movement" is to say we need a political party that relies on the people, not kleptocrats, not lawyers, not donors, and fights for issues that are relevant to those people. I didn't march in the recent protests because I am black, because I've felt fear from the police, because I've been systemically oppressed. Most of my peers didn't either, and the ones who were subject to those oppressions, among many others, are far braver than me, and for that I feel empathy. And for that we should march. These are issues of "people" because that's the most common denominator, not because we're excluding the factors. The underlying thread of what I said is that we need a movement that relies on the common empathy we have for each other. I want community. I want justice. I want to love my neighbor, as myself. I want you to pray to your god while I mine, even if mine is just a nice bike ride on a Sunday morning. And I know cynics, rightfully jaded by their lives, will probably say I'm being hopeful, youthful, naive. And I accept all of these, but I'd rather be those than have what we have today, what a simple cross to carry. I guess I just want to listen to John Lenin's Imagine and feel like he's talking about my world. And I'm not the only one.
bluedino 6y ago
It’s terrible. It’s due to Coronavirus. People are calling in and not going to work at the processing centers, which are mainly in urban areas. Trucks aren’t taking the mail to or from post offices. Carriers are understaffed. There definitely is overtime going on, I’m not sure where the article gets that confused. You can have all the hours you want if you work for the post office right now. We went party invitations to my mom brother who lives downstate four weeks ago. We just got it back the other day, he never received it. My mother still pays her bills with a check and she got an overdue notice from the power company. When she called a few days later they finally got the payment and applied it to her bill.
- jonathankoren 6y ago
  I don’t know why you think overtime is continuing to be authorized when there are multiple reports of it being eliminated, including the release of the internal memo explicitly eliminating extra and late delivery trips, and directing staff to leave undelivered mail on the floor. https://federalnewsnetwork.com/management/2020/07/usps-warns-staff-of-temporary-mail-delays-as-it-cuts-soaring-delivery-costs/ https://federalnewsnetwork.com/management/2020/07/usps-warns...
  - bluedino 6y ago
    Father in law is a carrier and still working overtime
    - jonathankoren 6y ago
      Fair enough
mike_h 6y ago
This is a critical threat to democracy given the circumstances of the upcoming election.
- elliekelly 6y ago
  That's a feature, not a bug. For those currently in charge at least.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  So get the word out that mail in ballots can be dropped off in person ahead of time. This is likely the sensible thing to do within a few weeks of the election anyway. Even without the problems at the post office, dropping it off directly really reduces the chances of it getting lost.
  - mike_h 6y ago
    Yes. And the harder problem (if this weren’t hard enough) is getting the ballots delivered to voters in the first place.
  - Simulacra 6y ago
    Or stolen or discarded. To vote by mail is to trust the letter carriers, a union that has typically heavily favored one party over the other. The solution is to open more voting locations - which is a state responsibility, not to trust it to some third party.
    - justSayin000001 6y ago
      That makes no sense. The people at the usps are federal employees (aka not a third party) and know the ramifications for tampering with the mail. I trust them to handle people’s votes over a volunteer everyday of the week. Opening more voting locations is a state responsibility, but when one party has a history of shirking their responsibilities and disenfranchising minorities then states ran by that party are hard to trust.
- minerjoe 6y ago
kevin_b_er 6y ago
This is the result of intentional sabotage by Trump administration. This is 100% political. A political set of acts by the Republicans.
jrobn 6y ago
Fascist strategies plain and simple. This is corruption folks. This is how seemingly functioning democracies slip into tyranny. Greed, lust for power, hatred.
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
  Real fascist government, like Russian, would DREAM to have a vote by mail procedure, because it would make frauding the vote extremely easy. The only thing stopping them is a complete wreck known as Russian Post.
nxc18 6y ago
It’s frustrating that we have to discuss the current administration as if we assume they are acting in good faith. It is frustrating to have to have a ‘but both sides...’ and ‘actually they just care about market efficiency’ arguments when the current administration, acting against all expert advice, has taken action to create the worst outcomes we’ve seen in decades, at least as long as I’ve been alive: unmanaged global pandemic (ignoring pandemic response plan and so predictable Biden was tweeting about it last fall), attempts to recklessly change policies that are overturned by the courts (often purely because the admin can’t be bothered to follow procedure), and now postal delays like I’ve never seen before, deliberately caused by a Trump-appointed postmaster. It shouldn’t be political to point out that for Americans, and probably many other people in the world, the current administration has delivered remarkably poor outcomes so consistently that you have to consider the possibility that that is the goal. America relies on strong infrastructure for our strong economy, and degrading an institution like the post office is just irresponsible. The whole voting by mail aspect is another angle to look at the continued ongoing attacks on the American lifestyle; apparently empty supermarket shelves weren’t enough. On top of all this absurdity, while it is clear that the degradation of service at the post office is intended to suppress democratic voters, there is little evidence that vote by mail privileges republicans: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/us/politics/vote-by-mail.html/ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/us/politics/vote-by-mail....
- lopmotr 6y ago
  > create the worst outcomes we’ve seen in decades Do you really believe all that is worse than the Iraq and Afghanistan wars which caused millions of people to be killed? It sounds like you're just a nationalist who thinks their lives don't matter because they're not Americans. If millions of Americans were killed in a decade-long internal war, you would probably rank it worse than the mail being slow, fear for your American lifestyle, and the president's policies being stopped by the courts.
  - nxc18 6y ago
    Americans have been destabilizing foreign countries almost continuously since the end of WW2, it’s the baseline state and hasn’t changed significantly under the current administration. If Trump actually delivered and extricated the US from the Middle East you might have a point, but he hasn’t. At best he’s ceded control of important areas to anti democratic regimes (Russia, Turkey) while abandoning US allies: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/13/world/middleeast/syria-turkey-invasion-isis.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/13/world/middleeast/syria-tu... edit: If you care about civilian deaths, you might be particularly interested in recent policy changes made by the Trump administration: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-06/trump-cancels-u-s-report-on-civilian-deaths-in-drone-strikes https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-06/trump-can... Another article describes the state of US murder of civilians in the Middle East: https://theintercept.com/2019/10/02/trump-impeachment-civilian-casualties-war/ https://theintercept.com/2019/10/02/trump-impeachment-civili... - I totally forgot that Trump had promised to murder the families of suspected terrorists; perhaps is delivering on that. (meta: parent comment is _exactly_ the type of bad faith, 'both sides' argument that I was referring to above; such arguments don't hold up under inspection or review of facts, but sadly people don't always take the time to point that out)
riffic 6y ago
Buy stamps, as if they were toilet paper or war bonds. If the American public buys stamps they can have a collective action of helping to save one of its finest institutions.
- missedthecue 6y ago
  Asking people to perform charity in order to save socialised letter delivery is going to be a hard sell.
  - happytoexplain 6y ago
    You phrased that like it's a contradiction, by it seems like the opposite. I'd expect that to naturally follow, ideologically.
    - missedthecue 6y ago
      I guess we'll see who was right by and by
  - adrianmonk 6y ago
    You could plan to use the stamps later and think of it as a loan to help the USPS through a pandemic and a hostile administration. Of course this means limiting yourself to a quantity you can actually use. Forever stamps roughly match inflation, so you're not even losing money in real terms, so it's not a horrible return. I don't use a lot of stamps myself, but I know someone who sells stuff on Amazon, eBay, etc., so if I bought $100 of stamps now, I could probably get them to buy them at full face value from me later. (It also looks like you can sell unused stamps online but only at around 70% of face value.)
  - Someone1234 6y ago
    Why? The post office is a fantastic organization, and it being a non-profit actually helps society operate effectively (e.g. many government services rely on USPS as a backstop). The post office is a utility, just like water and electricity (and internet should be). A lot of the reasons the post office is in the red are purely political (e.g. limiting what services they can offer, price caps, and financial mandates). I already purchased two years worth of stamps to support it. I also spent all my coins because the US Treasury has a shortage. We can all do more, particularly the bare minimal.
skuhn 6y ago
The underlying motivation here is to accomplish two things: 1. Destroy the viability of the post office as a business (a long running campaign) 2. Disenfranchise voters (a relatively recent campaign) Tens of thousands of people were disenfranchised during the primaries because their ballots were received too late, even if they were postmarked on time. [1] Tax returns are considered to be submitted on the date of their postmark, but ballots are not. There seems to be an important disconnect here tied to the different incentives for the state. Dropping ballots off at dropbox makes a lot of sense, but it won't work for everyone. The rules also vary and availability is often poorly communicated. Plus, most people won't expect to have a problem with their ballot being counted until they find out that it wasn't counted. But the problem doesn't start with submitting your ballot. First you have to successfully register to vote-by-mail (some states require a form to be mailed in), and most importantly you have to actually receive your ballot in time. This also happened during the primaries, and so people had to go vote in person after all (or be disenfranchised). [2] Lots of things we take for granted will stop working with a failed postal service, but voting is particularly key right now. It is the only path towards attempting to fix the issue at hand. [1] https://www.npr.org/2020/07/13/889751095/signed-sealed-undelivered-thousands-of-mail-in-ballots-rejected-for-tardiness https://www.npr.org/2020/07/13/889751095/signed-sealed-undel... [2] https://time.com/5874571/new-york-state-general-election/ https://time.com/5874571/new-york-state-general-election/
- augustt 6y ago
  > 2. Disenfranchise voters (a relatively recent campaign) Recent as in it started the instant the 15th amendment was passed.
  - skuhn 6y ago
    I'm referring to disenfranchisement by way of disrupting the operation of the mail, which I don't think has been a major focus for quite that long. Jim Crow laws were much more effective means of disenfranchisement during Reconstruction.
    - oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
owlrobot 6y ago
I saw the craziest thing Friday in my little town, there were five, maybe six postal carriers all on one street and they looked like they were in a hurry to get everyone their mail. I'm wondering now how many others there were on other streets that I just didn't see. It was so bizarre.
specialist 6y ago
Table stakes for a civil society: Clean water, fighting fires, drivable roads, edible food, reliable electricity, safety net for the poor elderly and infirm... And delivering the mail. And running the elections. How did we get to this point in history where any of this is up for discussion?
Havoc 6y ago
I don't quite get why this is #1 on hn?
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  Give the thread a read. There's a dramatic significance beyond "Philly's mail is delayed".
  - Havoc 6y ago
    A right. Another Fascism play. Agree that is unfortunately significant
xoxoy 6y ago
what if Trump’s new USPS head Louis DeJoy is purposefully cutting the budget and thus slowing mail delivery to mess with absentee ballots ahead of the election?
tyingq 6y ago
International shipping delays are pretty interesting right now. Because a fair amount of that was handled by now drastically reduced passenger flights, it's a crazy guessing game as to when a cross country shipment will arrive.
- SuperPaintMan 6y ago
  Tell me about it. I run a keyboard shop out of Canada and just trying to get parcels around is a nightmare near the Can/US border. It's getting to the point where packages heading to the EU/UK are actually arriving before the US counterparts. Add in the extra shenanigans that is the state of air cargo and different routes opening/closing and it's a very strange time to be trying to manage worldwide shipments. [1] https://www.gboards.ca/ https://www.gboards.ca/
jorblumesea 6y ago
It's crazy that the party in power is literally tearing apart democracy to stay in power. Destroying the foundations of this country, the right to vote, for self serving political purposes. Incredible that within 60-80 years the Republican party went from shoring up democracy here and abroad to naked fascism and intent on tearing up our institutions.
- riffic 6y ago
  Wait a second, what was the Republican Party doing between 1940 and 1960 that shored up democracy here and abroad?
Simulacra 6y ago
Example number one why mail in voting will never work. We can’t even prevent carriers from hoarding or throwing away mail, let alone ballots. The USPS has been grossly underfunded and abandoned for generations, and it’s in no position to take on our most valuable right and responsibility.
exabrial 6y ago
The USPS has degraded into a spam delivery service at a great cost to the environment. Prices for mail need to go up drastically to discourage use for advertising.
- castratikron 6y ago
  If it's any consolation the spam you're talking about is considered "third class" mail and is delivered in lower priority than most other mail. https://www.shipstation.com/blog/usps-first-class-mail-vs-priority-mail/ https://www.shipstation.com/blog/usps-first-class-mail-vs-pr...
mcguire 6y ago
Is this limited to Philadelphia, or are all large cities having problems?
foobarbazetc 6y ago
It took 7 days to get a letter from LA to SF. I’ve had a package in SF for 4 days now and it still hasn’t been delivered.

330 points by AndrewBissell 6y ago

Whatever USPS’s long term issues may be, is the middle of a pandemic the right time to “resolve” it? Is depriving people of medicines and mail and making them wait weeks so they receive urgent communications and packages the right solution right now? Wouldn’t it make far more sense to put in the short term Money during an emergency and try and figure out the long term solution afterwards? Unless, of course, your goal Is a Hail Mary to cause chaos and confusion so you might win an otherwise increasingly unwinnable Election.

deeblering4 6y ago

Isn’t america great again?

jayd16 6y ago

Just as we start to receive vote by mail forms (at least here in California).

floatingatoll 6y ago
You can return your mail-in ballot to a drop slot / drop box at your local election office, which saves them postage fees and gives you more certainty it arrived. If you can’t spare the time then the mail still works, but for those that are worried, it’s allowed.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  The location of the drop box for my precinct wasn't included in the state's list, but it ended up being a slot at one of the service windows at the city clerks office. Quick and easy.
- jypepin 6y ago
  I can't vote, but i can drive. Is it legal to drop someone else's ballot to the local election office? I'll drop it for people who can't go.
  - olliej 6y ago
    In Republican states there are many laws in place to make helping people vote extraordinarily challenging.
  - floatingatoll 6y ago
    Varies per state.
  - evan_ 6y ago
    That’s derisively known as ballot harvesting and the legality varies. Republicans generally say it’s cheating and try to pass laws to ban it, except when they do it themselves. https://twitter.com/libsinamerica/status/1261069338427211782?s=21 https://twitter.com/libsinamerica/status/1261069338427211782...
  - Simulacra 6y ago
    Or toss it?

gray_-_wolf 6y ago

Are there some actual studies stating that privatized mail office would be cheaper/more efficient/better service? Or is this just attempt at money grab?

cenal 6y ago
How can it not be less expensive? The private companies don’t have to offer/fund the insane pension benefits that public sector employees get. The public sector pension scandal is insane.
- wwright 6y ago
  Not giving employees benefits does not necessarily lead to a better service
  - orev 6y ago
    The USPS is uniquely shackled by a ridiculous requirement to prefund 75 years worth of pension and medical benefits, and is also barred from raising rates the help pay for it. There is no way any organization can operate that way.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      You are correct the problem is that they are now allowed to set prices, but incorrect in that USPS is not required to prefund 75 years of pension and medical benefits. It is required to save for accrued benefits. Which is how it should be. If you purchased, today, a $2,000 annuity starting when you are 65, wouldn’t you want the insurance company to start saving for it now? https://www.cnbc.com/2011/10/24/the-truth-about-the-post-offices-financial-mess.html https://www.cnbc.com/2011/10/24/the-truth-about-the-post-off... > Although accounting rules require the postal service to calculate future liabilities, including those for projected future employees, the law only requires pre-funding of obligations to actual current and past employees.
      - 6y ago

newbie789 6y ago

I've had significant delays up here in the Pacific Northwest. A friend of mine mailed me a box of comic books over two weeks ago and it's still in limbo. I just want to read Green Lantern Corps. :(

bredren 6y ago
My pal is a mail carrier in Portland. A few weeks ago the postmaster general ordered a normalized practice of overtime use to clear large amounts of mail from some bins to cease. Regularly, employees would catch up on mail processing this way. Mail has been piling up ever since. From what my pal told us, didn’t make sense given how mail is handled but it is also not unusual for unexplained top down orders in USPS to be given. Questioning USPS management does not make you a valued team member—-most people are focused on making sure their vacation time gets granted or trying to get successful bids for new routes or workflows. From many stories about the workings of USPS, it sounds to me like there are widespread inefficiencies in the post office. (And as an aside, there are definitely USPS employees that would not have jobs without the powerful union that keeps them there. Stuff that never would be forgiven in private enterprise happens all of the time.) However, this sudden action from the PM general is not the way to bring about change, it is just causing an organization with a lot of operational debt to redline.
newbie789 6y ago
Guess there's not a lot of DC fans on here, must be a Marvel crowd! In all seriousness, I live with a type 1 diabetic and I'm really, really glad that her insulin isn't delivered by mail anymore. This particular instance of fuckery could have literally killed my best friend. It's mind boggling to me that this is being treated so brazenly as a political football. I'm sure there are inefficiencies and bottlenecks that could be addressed, but literally stopping the mail to illustrate some notion about how the market could somehow create a better solution is reckless and frankly pretty disgusting. If this turns out to be somehow punitive because a certain somebody doesn't like mail-in voting, I'll be incredibly unsurprised.

morpheuskafka 6y ago

Would have appreciated some transparency on this before a shipped a $1K ecommerce package by Priority Mail last week. I read the official notice on the website and it just said PM was gonna be extended by one day. Then after it arrived in the destination ZIP they bumped it out another day, and now it is showing Alert status with no scans. Really unprofessional.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

cft 6y ago

I was in Guatemala and learned to my surprise that its national post has been disbanded. There's no functioning postal service of any kind, only private couriers.

elliekelly 6y ago
How does that even work? By private couriers do you mean companies similar to UPS and FedEx? Or private couriers like the bike couriers in US cities? If I needed to mail documents to the other side of the country, for example, could I just drop it off at a storefront or would I have to hire one person to take the envelope the whole length of the journey?
- jt94mf90d 6y ago
  The cartels could step in as a national postal carrier. Set postage agreements, and postage rates for garanteed services.
- cft 6y ago
  Not even FedEx, you literally hire a guy to deliver an envelope say from Guatemala City to Xela.

bkor 6y ago

> Amid this increase, sudden policy changes instituted to cut costs by new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Trump donor who was appointed in May, Interesting how that's possible. Corona delayed things in Netherlands, but seems they dealt with it smartly. Those delays didn't last that long as well. It does align with the suggestion that voting by mail is problematic, though seems like a created problem.

graeme 6y ago
It would appear to be the goal: scuttle the post system to disrupt voting by mail.

nemothekid 6y ago

Incredibly frustrating to get mail by USPS over the past couple months and even more frustrating to know this is an intentional kneecapping of the USPS by the administration in order "prove" government services are inefficient to privatize the USPS

betweeds 6y ago
Boy, it sure is coincidental timing that Trump appointed a new Postmaster General two months ago that immediately changed policies to prohibit overtime needed to get mail delivered, just as we're about to have an election that will see large parts of the country having to vote by mail. Now if only Trump could get his supporters to not rely on voting by mail, such as by playing up the message that the Coronavirus is not a big deal and that everyone just needs to go back to work and school and that they'll be fine by the time they need to get out and vote in person.
- jrobn 6y ago
  You’re being downvoted because it’s the inconvenient truth.
skybrian 6y ago
Demand is way up due to the pandemic. Amazon hired 175,000 temporary workers to keep up with demand [1]. All the Trump adminstration had to do to cause a problem was not hire any extra help and disallow overtime. [1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazon-reaches-1-million-workers-as-pandemic-pushes-total-up-11596136565 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazon-reaches-1-million-w...
- arp242 6y ago
  A business[1] getting in to financial trouble because of massive increase in customers is indeed a curious affair. [1]: Which the USPS is not, but let's be flexible with the term.
throwaway5752 6y ago
Its not a point about government effectiveness or efficiency. They kneecapped the USPS when they forced prefunding of pension liabilities (https://www.cnbc.com/2011/10/24/the-truth-about-the-post-offices-financial-mess.html https://www.cnbc.com/2011/10/24/the-truth-about-the-post-off...). They had more legislative leverage prior to 2018, so they could have done all this much earlier. It is not possible to honestly discuss this in a meaningful way without acknowledging it's 3 months out from a presidential election. It the closest thing they can legally do to suppress voting turnout, and it's a deliberate strategy to win the election by reducing the franchise. This isn't in a vacuum either, it's a coordinated part of a national legislative strategy (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/04/exposing-alec-how-conservative-backed-state-laws-are-all-connected/255869/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/04/exposin...). It is coordinated across at the state and federal levels, and across branches. You can see here with the intentional degrading of the USPS immediately prior to a national election, at a state level with polling place closures (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-locations/southern-us-states-have-closed-1200-polling-places-in-recent-years-rights-group-idUSKCN1VV09J https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-locations/so...) and photo id laws (https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-sheet https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-...), and constellation of Republican judicial appointments coordinated with specially prepared and crafted legal challenges by Republican AGs and private parties at state and circuit levels. This is how it's being done: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/leonard-leo-federalists-society-courts https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/...

ericmay 6y ago

Are they de-prioritizing all the spam and useless pre-sort stuff? That would be the first order of business for me.

salusinarduis 6y ago
I think it's the opposite, by design. This administration installed a loyalist (with extreme conflicts of interest) to de-legitimize the postal service prior to the election, which will largely be held by mail.
- Simulacra 6y ago
  Every administration does this, to advance their own agenda. Are you surprised?
  - salusinarduis 6y ago
    The injustices of the past should not be considered license for the future. We must call out corruption while we still have the freedom to do so.
dexterdog 6y ago
The spam is what pays the bills so it will not get de-prioritized.
- ericmay 6y ago
  Maybe that's a sign of dysfunction. People like to rail against ad supported companies, why wouldn't we feel the same way here?
  - dx87 6y ago
    Because it's a small price to pay for being able to send mail across the country for 55 cents. If most of the funding for the USPS came from people buying stamps to send out birthday and christmas cards, they'd either have to jack up the price considerably, or they wouldn't stop by your house 6 days a week to see if you have anything to send.

skybrian 6y ago

Here's a story about a smaller incident in Berkeley: https://www.berkeleyside.com/2020/07/31/covid-19-us-post-office-closed-berkeley-ca-workers-union https://www.berkeleyside.com/2020/07/31/covid-19-us-post-off...

Bombthecat 6y ago

You need to check out who is in charge of usps..

olliej 6y ago
You mean the trump appointed anti-usps sycophant? That is significantly invested in private usps competitors right? :-/
- scrollbar 6y ago
  Not sure why this comment is downvoted, seems pretty accurate https://www.salon.com/2020/05/07/top-trump-donor-who-gave-more-than-2-million-to-the-gop-picked-to-run-postal-service/ https://www.salon.com/2020/05/07/top-trump-donor-who-gave-mo...
  - throwaway2048 6y ago
    Because any suggestion that its the republicans behind political malfeasance on HN quickly gets down voted, you are only permitted to talk about "congress" or "the administration" in abstract.

annoyingnoob 6y ago

Even the Pony Express failed financially and as far as I can tell those guys were the definition of grit. But technology and the dangers of the times got the best of them.

faizshah 6y ago
If the USPS fails financially it just means we pay for it through taxes like every other government service. But in this case the USPS isn’t falling victim to technology it’s falling victim to political sabotage: https://ips-dc.org/how-congress-manufactured-a-postal-crisis-and-how-to-fix-it/ https://ips-dc.org/how-congress-manufactured-a-postal-crisis...
- annoyingnoob 6y ago
  While what you are saying is true, the USPS has very tall requirements. I wouldn't be so fast to discount the effects of technology. https://www.statista.com/statistics/320234/mail-volume-of-the-usps/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/320234/mail-volume-of-th...
smt88 6y ago
USPS is not failing financially. It's the victim of a long-gestating assassination and a refusal by the current admin to adapt it to the Covid era of high demand.

xzlzx 6y ago

Among other reasons, this is in big part happening due to a large push toward mail-in voting come the next Presidential election. It seems that certain political entities think they will suffer at the poles due to the fact that it’ll be easier to vote. easier voting -> more votes -> undesirable outcomes

nxc18 6y ago
The craziest thing about the whole situations is there actually isn’t much evidence that vote by mail favors republicans; and yet they’re willing to degrade postal service to a country more reliant on it than ever, just for a small hope of electoral advantage. Edit: article in case anyone isn’t convinced (I was skeptical at first, given the tone of the discussion): https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/us/politics/vote-by-mail.html/ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/us/politics/vote-by-mail....
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  There are other reasons they want to disband the post office beyond just its impact on voting. If they replace it with private entities it becomes easier to surveil and censor the mail, for instance.
  - leesalminen 6y ago
    The USPS takes an image of the front of the envelope for every first class letter sent in the USA. It's a safe bet that they're doing OCR of the recipient/sender addresses and store it in a database. USPS Informed Delivery is just a customer-facing result of that long standing program.
    - AndrewBissell 6y ago
      Yes, the goal of surveillance is already being advanced in many ways under the existing structure of the USPS.
    - mindslight 6y ago

alextheparrot 6y ago

This is problematic to voting in the same way closing polling sites is, framed as cost cutting or inefficiency reduction with the intention of reducing access to a subset of the population. This is just frustration, but the fact that we could pass a massive defense bill (again, I know), but are unable to fund basic services shows the integrity of our government. Moreover, it shows the culpability of most of the elected officials, from both parties. We don’t need a labor movement, we need a people’s movement.

claudeganon 6y ago
> Moreover, it shows the culpability of most of the elected officials, from both parties. It shows that after the labor movement was destroyed, the only material base for the Democratic Party was to go looking for money from the same people who give it to Republicans. Saying we don’t need a labor movement is equivalent to saying “we don’t need a political party that relies on support from workers.”
- alextheparrot 6y ago
  If I may, I'll add a correction to your quoted statement to give my intended meaning: “we don’t need a political party that relies only on support from workers.” The subdivision and segregation of American political movements has been an incredibly useful tool in defusing them. The labor, civil rights, suffrage, identity movements, were powerful, but the lack of intersectionality made it so that once policy victories were achieved the tenor died down. My comment was focused on how this was a fundamental weakness. For example, is voting by mail a "labor" issue? I would say no, and even if this opinion is generally wrong it shows the subdivision that occurs. There is no modern suffrage movement in the same way as existed in the early part of the 1900s. The idea of a "people's movement" is to say we need a political party that relies on the people, not kleptocrats, not lawyers, not donors, and fights for issues that are relevant to those people. I didn't march in the recent protests because I am black, because I've felt fear from the police, because I've been systemically oppressed. Most of my peers didn't either, and the ones who were subject to those oppressions, among many others, are far braver than me, and for that I feel empathy. And for that we should march. These are issues of "people" because that's the most common denominator, not because we're excluding the factors. The underlying thread of what I said is that we need a movement that relies on the common empathy we have for each other. I want community. I want justice. I want to love my neighbor, as myself. I want you to pray to your god while I mine, even if mine is just a nice bike ride on a Sunday morning. And I know cynics, rightfully jaded by their lives, will probably say I'm being hopeful, youthful, naive. And I accept all of these, but I'd rather be those than have what we have today, what a simple cross to carry. I guess I just want to listen to John Lenin's Imagine and feel like he's talking about my world. And I'm not the only one.

bluedino 6y ago

It’s terrible. It’s due to Coronavirus. People are calling in and not going to work at the processing centers, which are mainly in urban areas. Trucks aren’t taking the mail to or from post offices. Carriers are understaffed. There definitely is overtime going on, I’m not sure where the article gets that confused. You can have all the hours you want if you work for the post office right now. We went party invitations to my mom brother who lives downstate four weeks ago. We just got it back the other day, he never received it. My mother still pays her bills with a check and she got an overdue notice from the power company. When she called a few days later they finally got the payment and applied it to her bill.

jonathankoren 6y ago
I don’t know why you think overtime is continuing to be authorized when there are multiple reports of it being eliminated, including the release of the internal memo explicitly eliminating extra and late delivery trips, and directing staff to leave undelivered mail on the floor. https://federalnewsnetwork.com/management/2020/07/usps-warns-staff-of-temporary-mail-delays-as-it-cuts-soaring-delivery-costs/ https://federalnewsnetwork.com/management/2020/07/usps-warns...
- bluedino 6y ago
  Father in law is a carrier and still working overtime
  - jonathankoren 6y ago
    Fair enough

mike_h 6y ago

This is a critical threat to democracy given the circumstances of the upcoming election.

elliekelly 6y ago
That's a feature, not a bug. For those currently in charge at least.
maxerickson 6y ago
So get the word out that mail in ballots can be dropped off in person ahead of time. This is likely the sensible thing to do within a few weeks of the election anyway. Even without the problems at the post office, dropping it off directly really reduces the chances of it getting lost.
- mike_h 6y ago
  Yes. And the harder problem (if this weren’t hard enough) is getting the ballots delivered to voters in the first place.
- Simulacra 6y ago
  Or stolen or discarded. To vote by mail is to trust the letter carriers, a union that has typically heavily favored one party over the other. The solution is to open more voting locations - which is a state responsibility, not to trust it to some third party.
  - justSayin000001 6y ago
    That makes no sense. The people at the usps are federal employees (aka not a third party) and know the ramifications for tampering with the mail. I trust them to handle people’s votes over a volunteer everyday of the week. Opening more voting locations is a state responsibility, but when one party has a history of shirking their responsibilities and disenfranchising minorities then states ran by that party are hard to trust.
minerjoe 6y ago

kevin_b_er 6y ago

This is the result of intentional sabotage by Trump administration. This is 100% political. A political set of acts by the Republicans.

jrobn 6y ago

Fascist strategies plain and simple. This is corruption folks. This is how seemingly functioning democracies slip into tyranny. Greed, lust for power, hatred.

Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
Real fascist government, like Russian, would DREAM to have a vote by mail procedure, because it would make frauding the vote extremely easy. The only thing stopping them is a complete wreck known as Russian Post.

nxc18 6y ago

It’s frustrating that we have to discuss the current administration as if we assume they are acting in good faith. It is frustrating to have to have a ‘but both sides...’ and ‘actually they just care about market efficiency’ arguments when the current administration, acting against all expert advice, has taken action to create the worst outcomes we’ve seen in decades, at least as long as I’ve been alive: unmanaged global pandemic (ignoring pandemic response plan and so predictable Biden was tweeting about it last fall), attempts to recklessly change policies that are overturned by the courts (often purely because the admin can’t be bothered to follow procedure), and now postal delays like I’ve never seen before, deliberately caused by a Trump-appointed postmaster. It shouldn’t be political to point out that for Americans, and probably many other people in the world, the current administration has delivered remarkably poor outcomes so consistently that you have to consider the possibility that that is the goal. America relies on strong infrastructure for our strong economy, and degrading an institution like the post office is just irresponsible. The whole voting by mail aspect is another angle to look at the continued ongoing attacks on the American lifestyle; apparently empty supermarket shelves weren’t enough. On top of all this absurdity, while it is clear that the degradation of service at the post office is intended to suppress democratic voters, there is little evidence that vote by mail privileges republicans: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/us/politics/vote-by-mail.html/ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/us/politics/vote-by-mail....

lopmotr 6y ago
> create the worst outcomes we’ve seen in decades Do you really believe all that is worse than the Iraq and Afghanistan wars which caused millions of people to be killed? It sounds like you're just a nationalist who thinks their lives don't matter because they're not Americans. If millions of Americans were killed in a decade-long internal war, you would probably rank it worse than the mail being slow, fear for your American lifestyle, and the president's policies being stopped by the courts.
- nxc18 6y ago
  Americans have been destabilizing foreign countries almost continuously since the end of WW2, it’s the baseline state and hasn’t changed significantly under the current administration. If Trump actually delivered and extricated the US from the Middle East you might have a point, but he hasn’t. At best he’s ceded control of important areas to anti democratic regimes (Russia, Turkey) while abandoning US allies: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/13/world/middleeast/syria-turkey-invasion-isis.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/13/world/middleeast/syria-tu... edit: If you care about civilian deaths, you might be particularly interested in recent policy changes made by the Trump administration: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-06/trump-cancels-u-s-report-on-civilian-deaths-in-drone-strikes https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-06/trump-can... Another article describes the state of US murder of civilians in the Middle East: https://theintercept.com/2019/10/02/trump-impeachment-civilian-casualties-war/ https://theintercept.com/2019/10/02/trump-impeachment-civili... - I totally forgot that Trump had promised to murder the families of suspected terrorists; perhaps is delivering on that. (meta: parent comment is _exactly_ the type of bad faith, 'both sides' argument that I was referring to above; such arguments don't hold up under inspection or review of facts, but sadly people don't always take the time to point that out)

riffic 6y ago

Buy stamps, as if they were toilet paper or war bonds. If the American public buys stamps they can have a collective action of helping to save one of its finest institutions.

missedthecue 6y ago
Asking people to perform charity in order to save socialised letter delivery is going to be a hard sell.
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  You phrased that like it's a contradiction, by it seems like the opposite. I'd expect that to naturally follow, ideologically.
  - missedthecue 6y ago
    I guess we'll see who was right by and by
- adrianmonk 6y ago
  You could plan to use the stamps later and think of it as a loan to help the USPS through a pandemic and a hostile administration. Of course this means limiting yourself to a quantity you can actually use. Forever stamps roughly match inflation, so you're not even losing money in real terms, so it's not a horrible return. I don't use a lot of stamps myself, but I know someone who sells stuff on Amazon, eBay, etc., so if I bought $100 of stamps now, I could probably get them to buy them at full face value from me later. (It also looks like you can sell unused stamps online but only at around 70% of face value.)
- Someone1234 6y ago
  Why? The post office is a fantastic organization, and it being a non-profit actually helps society operate effectively (e.g. many government services rely on USPS as a backstop). The post office is a utility, just like water and electricity (and internet should be). A lot of the reasons the post office is in the red are purely political (e.g. limiting what services they can offer, price caps, and financial mandates). I already purchased two years worth of stamps to support it. I also spent all my coins because the US Treasury has a shortage. We can all do more, particularly the bare minimal.

skuhn 6y ago

The underlying motivation here is to accomplish two things: 1. Destroy the viability of the post office as a business (a long running campaign) 2. Disenfranchise voters (a relatively recent campaign) Tens of thousands of people were disenfranchised during the primaries because their ballots were received too late, even if they were postmarked on time. [1] Tax returns are considered to be submitted on the date of their postmark, but ballots are not. There seems to be an important disconnect here tied to the different incentives for the state. Dropping ballots off at dropbox makes a lot of sense, but it won't work for everyone. The rules also vary and availability is often poorly communicated. Plus, most people won't expect to have a problem with their ballot being counted until they find out that it wasn't counted. But the problem doesn't start with submitting your ballot. First you have to successfully register to vote-by-mail (some states require a form to be mailed in), and most importantly you have to actually receive your ballot in time. This also happened during the primaries, and so people had to go vote in person after all (or be disenfranchised). [2] Lots of things we take for granted will stop working with a failed postal service, but voting is particularly key right now. It is the only path towards attempting to fix the issue at hand. [1] https://www.npr.org/2020/07/13/889751095/signed-sealed-undelivered-thousands-of-mail-in-ballots-rejected-for-tardiness https://www.npr.org/2020/07/13/889751095/signed-sealed-undel... [2] https://time.com/5874571/new-york-state-general-election/ https://time.com/5874571/new-york-state-general-election/

augustt 6y ago
> 2. Disenfranchise voters (a relatively recent campaign) Recent as in it started the instant the 15th amendment was passed.
- skuhn 6y ago
  I'm referring to disenfranchisement by way of disrupting the operation of the mail, which I don't think has been a major focus for quite that long. Jim Crow laws were much more effective means of disenfranchisement during Reconstruction.
  - oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago

owlrobot 6y ago

I saw the craziest thing Friday in my little town, there were five, maybe six postal carriers all on one street and they looked like they were in a hurry to get everyone their mail. I'm wondering now how many others there were on other streets that I just didn't see. It was so bizarre.

specialist 6y ago

Table stakes for a civil society: Clean water, fighting fires, drivable roads, edible food, reliable electricity, safety net for the poor elderly and infirm... And delivering the mail. And running the elections. How did we get to this point in history where any of this is up for discussion?

Havoc 6y ago

I don't quite get why this is #1 on hn?

happytoexplain 6y ago
Give the thread a read. There's a dramatic significance beyond "Philly's mail is delayed".
- Havoc 6y ago
  A right. Another Fascism play. Agree that is unfortunately significant

xoxoy 6y ago

what if Trump’s new USPS head Louis DeJoy is purposefully cutting the budget and thus slowing mail delivery to mess with absentee ballots ahead of the election?

tyingq 6y ago

International shipping delays are pretty interesting right now. Because a fair amount of that was handled by now drastically reduced passenger flights, it's a crazy guessing game as to when a cross country shipment will arrive.

SuperPaintMan 6y ago
Tell me about it. I run a keyboard shop out of Canada and just trying to get parcels around is a nightmare near the Can/US border. It's getting to the point where packages heading to the EU/UK are actually arriving before the US counterparts. Add in the extra shenanigans that is the state of air cargo and different routes opening/closing and it's a very strange time to be trying to manage worldwide shipments. [1] https://www.gboards.ca/ https://www.gboards.ca/

jorblumesea 6y ago

It's crazy that the party in power is literally tearing apart democracy to stay in power. Destroying the foundations of this country, the right to vote, for self serving political purposes. Incredible that within 60-80 years the Republican party went from shoring up democracy here and abroad to naked fascism and intent on tearing up our institutions.

riffic 6y ago
Wait a second, what was the Republican Party doing between 1940 and 1960 that shored up democracy here and abroad?

Simulacra 6y ago

Example number one why mail in voting will never work. We can’t even prevent carriers from hoarding or throwing away mail, let alone ballots. The USPS has been grossly underfunded and abandoned for generations, and it’s in no position to take on our most valuable right and responsibility.

exabrial 6y ago

The USPS has degraded into a spam delivery service at a great cost to the environment. Prices for mail need to go up drastically to discourage use for advertising.

castratikron 6y ago
If it's any consolation the spam you're talking about is considered "third class" mail and is delivered in lower priority than most other mail. https://www.shipstation.com/blog/usps-first-class-mail-vs-priority-mail/ https://www.shipstation.com/blog/usps-first-class-mail-vs-pr...

mcguire 6y ago

Is this limited to Philadelphia, or are all large cities having problems?

foobarbazetc 6y ago

It took 7 days to get a letter from LA to SF. I’ve had a package in SF for 4 days now and it still hasn’t been delivered.