4 ms·

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 pos

• 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
      The USPS includes legal protections against your mail being opened, and a mandate to serve everyone. Whereas private companies can be fully employed for government surveillance (third party doctrine), sell bulk records to commercial surveillance companies (equifax, google, etc), as well as refusing service to whomever they like (ala MC/Visa). I agree this isn't the overriding concern of those trying to destroy the USPS, but it's surely a nice bonus.
  • AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    There was this incident a while back. Some psychopath sent letters threatening to kidnap young females, rape them, and kill them. He talked about how he had rigged out a van to facilitate this. His letters got turned over to the FBI, since they would up in different states. Turns out that each stamp has microprinting on it that identifies it. Given the stamp, they were able to identify which post office it was sold at. They guessed at approximately when it was sold, and then from the security cameras they identified the letter writer. So... explain how private entities are going to do more surveillance?
    • AndrewBissell 6y ago
      Private entities will just have terms of service which say they're entitled to open and inspect your mail for any reason they see fit. mindslight's comment above does a good job of touching on some other ways it will enable more surveillance. But yes, the postal service has already been turned to this purpose in many ways and the days of "gentlemen don't read each other's mail" are largely over.
• olliej 6y ago
  The concern for the GOP isn’t that democrats favor voting by mail, it’s that the GOP has worked hard to make it as hard as possible to vote in person in targeted (eg non Republican) communities. Widespread vote from mail defeats that as it means that their selective polling closures, and arbitrary barriers to voting in person, go away
  • xzlzx 6y ago
    This is a great point. That makes a lot of sense.
  • bobsoap 6y ago
    Out of curiosity, what are those barriers?
    • ethanbond 6y ago
      Photo ID laws is a big one. Closing polling stations in minority communities.
      • _-david-_ 6y ago
        Can you name a first world county that doesn't have voter id laws?
        • ethanbond 6y ago
          How about this: if Republicans were pushing voter ID laws plus a comprehensive plan to get IDs to every American who wishes to vote, I suspect no one would have any problem with such a proposal. As it stands now, there are large groups of Americans for whom getting a photo ID is a non-trivial task. People without birth records, people who can’t take time off work to go to the DMV, people who don’t know that they go to the DMV to get an ID, people who live hours from the nearest DMV, so on and so forth. Let’s make sure they all get a chance to vote. Any proposal that aims to do that, I believe, would not have the support of the Republican Party, because the Republican Party is uninterested in increasing voter turnout.