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The Post Office Is Deactivating Mail Sorting Machines Ahead of the Election
- zalkota 6y agoHow about we don’t have a mail in vote and just make the day a holiday.
- rabidrat 6y agoHow 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?
- BurningFrog 6y agoYeah, polling stations are dimensioned for typical turnout, which includes a majority voting by mail.
- erentz 6y agoNot really. Minorities are routinely disenfranchised through polling station closures. See all the polling station closures during the primaries using COVID as the reason. “Black voters, on average, wait 45 percent longer to vote than white voters; Latino voters wait 46 percent longer” https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/613408/ https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/613408/ See also the particularly egregious Kentucky example where they even tried to close the station while people were still in line. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-primaries-kentucky-1.5623343 https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-primaries-kentucky-1.562334... The examples of this kind of suppression are sadly countless here in the US.
- frobozz 6y agoDo 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.
- AdmiralAsshat 6y agoWe'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.
- alwaysdoit 6y agoWell, many of those people also don't get to take Federal holidays off. See "Black Friday", "Presidents' Day Sale", etc.
- ac29 6y agoBlack Friday is not a federal holiday, its the day after a federal holiday, which many office workers customarily get off (but not retail workers as you mentioned). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_holidays_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_holidays_in_the_United...
- bfieidhbrjr 6y agoIf you've actively lobbied for that for years, in multiple states and those darn Republicans refused it... Then those years would include times when there was a Democrat president and congress, and governors. So maybe blaming the other side is just politically convenient?
- Lendal 6y agoFlorida's state govt has been in complete control of Republicans (all houses + gov) for over 30 years, despite Republican voter registrations being in the minority.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pandaman 6y ago
- et-al 6y agoBecause the whole point of Trump appointing an inexperienced postmaster general is to cripple the USPS to reduce voter turnout.
- MrRadar 6y agoThat might work in a normal election year, but this year that solution would still put people in a bind between risking getting a severe infectious disease and exercising their democratic rights.
- poulsbohemian 6y agoAs much as I'd like to see it be a holiday (because I think it places the right degree of emphasis on its importance), the reality is that voting by mail works great. In fact, living in Washington state and having voted absentee before VBM became universal... I'm not sure I've ever voted in a polling place (and I've got a lot of grey hair). I can't say enough good things about being able to take my time to research candidates and vote when it is convenient for my schedule, rather than some 9-8 window on a particular day.
- valbaca 6y agoIn-person voting is being stifled as well. Look at the Georgia primary. https://www.npr.org/2020/06/09/873054620/long-lines-voting-machine-issues-plague-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?!?
- pseudalopex 6y agoVoting in person means you can't prove how you voted. That makes it harder for someone to bribe or bully their way into office.
- mywittyname 6y agoIf 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.
- labster 6y agoPlease 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 https://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/voter-info/vote-by-mail.htm
- happytoexplain 6y ago>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.
- labster 6y agoI 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.
- groovypuppy 6y agoYour intentions are noble but there are very strict regulations as to who can handle ballots, the USPS being one of them.
- jandrese 6y agoMy 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.
- jgacook 6y agoThis is untrue - different states have different standards by which mail in ballots will be counted. A postmark on or before Election Day is no guarantee your vote will be tallied, depending on where you live.
- dekhn 6y agoit seems like that would be a reasonable goal, though- a SLO of 99.99% mail-in ballots with postmarks on or before Election Day should be counted.
- jefurii 6y agoAnd in places like California which take a long time to count ballots they usually announce results and the election is effectvely over before everything is counted.
- jandrese 6y agoMost places will make the announcement once the outstanding ballots are extremely unlikely to change the result of the election. So if Candidate A is winning 500,000 to 400,000 but 150,000 ballots are still outstanding then they'll make the call for Candidate A because there is no reason to think that the outstanding ballots will be that much different in distribution than the already counted ballots. This can be adjusted based on historical precedent as well, if you know that late counting precincts tend to vote in a certain way then you can make educated guesses as to when the results of that precinct will no longer make a difference. Even after adding in some extra margin for safety you can call the race. The tricky part is when a race is really close and you have to count every ballot. This is when waiting 3-5 days for the mail to finish trickling in is going to cause cable news anchors to lose sleep.
- shiado 6y agoIf 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.
- dwhit 6y agoDo 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.
- happytoexplain 6y agoArguably this is what happened with Trump - just indirectly. But yes, internet voting is decades from ready.
- berbec 6y agoMarble cake, also the game https://techcrunch.com/2009/04/21/4chan-takes-over-the-time-100/ https://techcrunch.com/2009/04/21/4chan-takes-over-the-time-...
- shiado 6y agoThat'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 entire design of American representative democracy which is purpose built to prop up candidates captured by big money corporate donors and PACs.
- ardy42 6y agoThis 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.
- jgacook 6y agoDirect election interference. Please call your elected representatives and demand action. There is no safe alternative to voting by mail in the middle of a pandemic that the Trump administration has completely bungled a response to. We are watching the creation of a banana republic in realtime.
- BurningFrog 6y agoI know this is an annoying thing to say, but: This is an argument for not having mail delivery being controlled by elected politicians.
- ianlevesque 6y agoIt sure is, but privatizing opens up an entire other can of worms. It'd be far easier to "disappear" someone's mail in a private corporation unless there is strong legal oversight. And that brings it back to having elected politicians controlling who's auditing the private delivery companies. It's a mess.
- AWildC182 6y agoPander to people acting in bad faith because they act in bad faith... Seems like a good strategy. We need the postal service to be a gov entity because the alternative is having UPS control our elections.
- pavel_lishin 6y ago> This is an argument for not having mail delivery being controlled by elected politicians. Which is not the same thing as having mail delivery being controlled by private companies, who are even less answerable to the public than elected politicians.
- BurningFrog 6y agoThen who is left? Churches? Foreign governments?
- ardy42 6y ago> This is an argument for not having mail delivery being controlled by elected politicians. That wouldn't solve anything. If it's not controlled by elected politicians, it could still be controlled by others with political or ideological motivations, and it would be harder to hold those people accountable. The real solution is political checks and balances and more oversight.
- seizethecheese 6y agoWe 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 dozens of locations around the US every day.
- nthj 6y agoHey, 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 charge. Is that something your team is exploring?
- poulsbohemian 6y agoI 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?
- nthj 6y agoPoint 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.
- seizethecheese 6y agoSorry for the delays. We can't control it, but we still are responsible for your overall experience. Generally we monitor this and send replacements if coffees get stuck. We will probably do this automatically soon. I understand this still isn't ideal. We definitely are looking into allowing a FedEx option. We have a pretty complicated product, so it is nice to use a single shipper for now, though. One thing that could help is picking coffee directly from a roaster that is close to you. If you tell me where you live, I can send you the best roasters for a consistent experience.
- Miner49er 6y agoAfter reading the article it seems like it won't effect the election results - other then maybe making them take slightly longer? But even that seems unlikely.
- strict9 6y agoMy father in law works for the USPS and mentioned the elimination of these machines as well as elimination of overtime about a month ago. It's being described as a result of a massive decrease in flat mail. From the local union newsletter: "On 5-15-2020 USPS announced a National Equipment Reduction Plan to remove and scrap 671 pieces of equipment nationwide. ... USPS is scrapping and not relocating these machines because they don't see the mail coming back." The 5/15 date is interesting because it's about a week after the new Postmaster/CEO was appointed. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_DeJoy#U.S._Postmaster_General_and_CEO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_DeJoy#U.S._Postmaster_Ge...
- erentz 6y agoPosted this article separately but it was flagged. The quiet part has been said out loud by the president. The motivations have been made clear here and the speculation about why this is happening ends there IMO: > “They need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump said in an interview with Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo. “If they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting because they’re not equipped to have it.” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/13/donald-trump-usps-post-office-election-funding https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/13/donald-trump...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tomohawk 6y agoMail 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.
- alex_young 6y agoWhy is this flagged? A working postal system is a required element of many YC companies.