What the heck is going on with the USPS?

[Highway Star]

Oh one more quote from the article you cited:

In the 2016 US Presidential election, approximately 33 million ballots were cast by postal vote, about a quarter of all ballots cast.[35] Some jurisdictions used only vote-by-mail and others absentee votes.

So 1/4 of all ballots cast in 2016 were by postal vote. Was there widespread fraud in this election that resulted in Trump's presidency? What am I missing here?

I think anyone who's looking at this objectively sees it for what it is. Trump fears the outcome of 2020, which he should given his poll numbers, and he's trying to suppress the vote to gain an advantage. He's far from the first U.S. politician to try to suppress the vote to seek advantage and likely won't be the last. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

Fraud highly likely in CA.

[Highway Star]

For nearly a decade I was out with the Air Force (SAC) I never used my AF address to get my ballot. I contacted the town and they sent me my Absentee ballot. Fill it out and send it in. Unfortunately too many people take advantage by delaying returning the ballots so the votes do not get counted. Now they are including people who have no reason to get the absentee ballot.

In the COVID era, there should not be many people with no reason to get an absentee ballot.

I don't know if you've left the house lately, but there's tons of people out and about every day.

[easyrider16]

Fraud highly likely in CA.

Got any evidence?

[Highway Star]

Fraud highly likely in CA.

Got any evidence?

It's CA.

[easyrider16]

So no. You're just repeating what your guy says and running with it, which was what I initially said many posts back. Next time just save us the time and admit it from the start.

[Highway Star]

So no. You're just repeating what your guy says and running with it, which was what I initially said many posts back. Next time just save us the time and admit it from the start.

They can't keep the lights on in CA without burning down a forest.

Do you honestly think they can prevent, let alone detect voter fraud in CA????

HAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA

[Highway Star]

How many ballots are the Dems planning on sending in? A few billion?

The USPS normally handles nearly 200 million pieces of first class mail EVERY f*** DAY.

https://facts.usps.com/one-day/

[easyrider16]

From the other thread:

Trump’s comments Thursday were not made in isolation. The day before, Trump told reporters that he had refused to sign off on an emergency funding package that included $25 billion for the Postal Service and $3.5 billion for election security. On the call with Fox on Thursday, Trump linked his decision to block those funds to his opposition to mail voting. “That’s election money, basically,” he said after asserting the funding would be “for something that will turn out to be fraudulent.”

DeJoy, who has served as Postmaster General for less than two months, has already initiated a sweeping reorganization of the USPS, including a hiring freeze and other cost-cutting moves that postal workers say are hampering their ability to pick-up and deliver mail on time. State election officials say delays in mail pick-up and delivery could hamper the agency’s ability to deliver ballots before the November election.

While millions of Americans are planning to vote by mail for the first time this year, Patrick says that the increase in mail-in ballots is not her primary concern. The Postal Service processes about 180 million pieces of mail a day, so the increase in ballots is just “a blip on the radar” she says.

“We have established over the years many policies and protocols in collaboration with the Postal Service, to make sure that there is accountability and integrity in the vote by mail process,” Patrick says. “My concern under this new Postmaster General is whether or not those same policies are going to be fulfilled, and acknowledged and satisfied.”

The issue is not that the US postal service will become overwhelmed with mail from ballots. The issue is that Trump is screwing with funding specifically slated for mail in voting security and his postmaster general is purposely implementing procedures to delay the delivery of mail.

https://time.com/5879267/trump-postal-s ... il-voting/

[Highway Star]

SUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure.

[easyrider16]

To be fair, I think there's at least a 50% chance that Trump is just trolling the media and democrats with this whole mail in ballot fraud thing and that he doesn't really intend to interfere. But appointing a new postmaster months before an election that is likely to rely heavily on the post office is suspect, and even more so when that postmaster starts making all kinds of changes that seem likely to create delays in mail delivery.

[Highway Star]

Good long read for all you still xxxguzzling the media's narrative.

https://www.reddit.com/r/donaldtrump/co ... _debunked/

Do you feel completely ridiculous yet?

MUH OMG THE THEY ARE TAKIN THE MAIL BOXES TRUMP IS STEELIN MY VOTERINO

[easyrider16]

Good long read for all you still xxxguzzling the media's narrative.

https://www.reddit.com/r/donaldtrump/co ... _debunked/

Do you feel completely ridiculous yet?

MUH OMG THE THEY ARE TAKIN THE MAIL BOXES TRUMP IS STEELIN MY VOTERINO

"This subreddit is a pro-Trump subreddit for sharing information about the 45th President Donald J Trump and the 2020 Presidential Election, as well as related materials. "

Glad you rely on unbiased sources. Nothing here addresses the fact that Trump appointed a new postmaster just before an election that is likely to heavily depend on the post office, the fact that he's the one who's been saying mail in voting would lead to fraud, and he's the one who said he blocked funding for the post office that was specifically slated for election security because he doesn't want the money used for something that would lead to fraud. If there is a narrative here, it's Trump who is creating it.

[Highway Star]

Good long read for all you still xxxguzzling the media's narrative.

https://www.reddit.com/r/donaldtrump/co ... _debunked/

Do you feel completely ridiculous yet?

MUH OMG THE THEY ARE TAKIN THE MAIL BOXES TRUMP IS STEELIN MY VOTERINO

"This subreddit is a pro-Trump subreddit for sharing information about the 45th President Donald J Trump and the 2020 Presidential Election, as well as related materials. "

Glad you rely on unbiased sources. Nothing here addresses the fact that Trump appointed a new postmaster just before an election that is likely to heavily depend on the post office, the fact that he's the one who's been saying mail in voting would lead to fraud, and he's the one who said he blocked funding for the post office that was specifically slated for election security because he doesn't want the money used for something that would lead to fraud. If there is a narrative here, it's Trump who is creating it.

The Postal Service conspiracy, debunked
"UPS and FedEx are doing just fine... It's the Post Office that's always having problems."
—Barack Obama, 2009 (video)

TL;DR:
The Postal Service processes almost half a billion pieces of mail each day. The anticipated volume of mail-in ballots amount to a fraction of the total volume USPS will deal with over the next two months.

The Postal Service has longstanding financial difficulties, but has enough cash on hand to continue operations until October 2021 at current rates, even without tapping a $10 billion line of credit provided by the CARES Act.

The Postal Service has been removing under-performing blue mailboxes for decades in response to declining use, including more than 14,000 removed under the Obama Administration.

The Postal Service has been consolidating processing centers and re-orienting operations within processing centers for years in response to declining letter mail volume and increasing package volume.

FedEx and other parcel delivery services are also suffering delivery delays amid the coronavirus pandemic. Delays are not unique to USPS.

The Postal Service encouraged states to send ballots to voters 14 days before Election Day even before DeJoy took over as Postmaster General. The co-chair of the New York State Board of Elections (a Democrat) made the same recommendation.

Will the Postal Service be able to handle all of the mailed-in ballots this November?
First, let's set some context: the Postal Service processes 472 million pieces of mail each day. In the 2016 presidential election, 138 million people voted. According to CNN, voters will begin receiving absentee ballots as early as September 4. This means that even if every single voter mailed their ballot in over the course of those two months, it would amount to a drop in the ocean compared to the total amount of mail USPS will process during that period.

Is the Postal Service being underfunded to sabotage the election?
Obviously, the Postal Service has significant longstanding financial difficulties dating back decades, largely due to Congressional mismanagement. The immediate question is, however, is the Postal Service being sabotaged or otherwise undermined to affect the election. In a word: no.

The Postal Service has more cash on hand than it had before the pandemic, according to the Washington Post:

At the start of the pandemic, the Postal Service had $9.2 billion in cash, roughly two months of pay for its 630,000 workers. It now has $13.4 billion in cash after tapping a separate $3.4 billion loan from Treasury.

In fact, this is more cash on hand than the USPS has ever had.

In addition, the CARES Act, which Trump signed into law earlier this year, provides an additional $10 billion line of credit to the USPS, should it need it:

United States Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced today that the United States Postal Service (USPS) has reached an agreement in principle with the United States Department of the Treasury on the terms and conditions associated with $10 billion lending authority provided in the CARES Act. The USPS Board of Governors unanimously approved the agreement in principle yesterday and expects that the parties will formally memorialize the agreement through loan documents that will be jointly developed over the coming weeks.

Further, according to the Washington Post, the pandemic has actually improved the finances of the Postal Service, not deteriorated them, due to increased e-commerce shipping:

A tidal wave of packages is keeping the U.S. Postal Service afloat during the coronavirus recession, boosting the beleaguered agency’s finances to near pre-pandemic levels...

Week to week, package deliveries increased 20 to 50 percent in April compared with the year-ago period, and 60 to 80 percent in May.

As a result, the Postal Service has enough money to continue operations well past the election, through March 2021 at the worst and October 2021 at the best, without even accessing the Treasury's $10 billion line of credit:

If package volumes persist at 15 to 20 percent above normal levels in the coming months and the Postal Service does not do any more borrowing, it will delay its solvency crisis until October 2021. But if package volumes return to pre-pandemic levels, the agency is set to run out of cash by March. Accessing the $10 billion loan from Treasury would put off insolvency even further.

In short, there is no imminent danger that the Postal Service will run out of money prior to the election.

What about them taking away the blue mailboxes?
The Washington Post covered the declining use of public mailboxes in 2009:

...half of the blue boxes in the Washington area have disappeared in the last nine years, and 200,000 nationwide have been plucked up in the last 20 years, leaving 175,000 total.

The U.S. Postal Service says it removes "underperforming" mailboxes -- those that collect fewer than 25 pieces of mail a day -- after a week-long "density test." Snail mail is a dying enterprise because Americans increasingly pay bills online, send Evites for parties and text or give a quick call on a cellphone rather than write a letter.

In addition, the Obama-appointed USPS Inspector General noted in 2016 that this process continued under the Obama Administration and is based on usage data:

Nationwide, there were about 153,000 collection boxes at the end of fiscal year (FY) 2016; however, the U.S. Postal Service has been removing underused boxes, with about 14,000 boxes removed over the past five years. Postal Service policy requires approval by the Area and public notification in order to permanently remove a collection box.

Separately, since 2016, USPS has been removing older model blue mailboxes and replacing them with new ones that prevent mail fishing (where a perpetrator steals mail from the box):

Since late 2016, the U.S. Postal Service has been replacing or retrofitting thousands of mailboxes throughout the Northeast to combat a surge in mail theft involving string and glue contraptions.

“As the deployment progresses, northern New Jersey consumers will notice a difference with the way mail is deposited into the security enhanced boxes,” said George Flood, a Postal Service spokesman. “The new collection boxes demonstrate our commitment to the safety and security of the mail.”

In short, USPS has been removing or replacing blue mailboxes for over a decade because nobody uses them anymore or they need to be replaced with more secure ones. It's not a conspiracy. It's standard practice based on usage and theft data.

What about them removing mail sorting machines and closing processing centers?
As the New York Times and Washington Post reported, the Postal Service has been consolidating processing centers since at least 2012, moving to centralized processing as a way to drive efficiencies in response to declining mail volume:

The United States Postal Service announced Thursday [February 23, 2012] that it would begin consolidating 48 mail processing centers beginning in July, the first phase of a cost-cutting plan that is intended to save the agency nearly $1.2 billion a year as it tries to adjust to declining mail volume.

Likewise, as total volume of mail continues to shift toward packages and away from letter mail, the Postal Service has been re-orienting existing processing centers toward package processing. After publishing an almost conspiratorial article about a mere 19 mail sorting machines being removed from five processing centers, Vice edited its article to append this more plausible explanation:

Most of the machines being dismantled in the facilities Motherboard identified are delivery bar code sorters (DBCS), into which letters, postcards and similarly sized mail (but not magazines and large envelopes, which are categorized as “flats” and sorted differently) are fed.

After publication, USPS spokesperson David Partenheimer told Motherboard, “The Postal Service routinely moves equipment around its network as necessary to match changing mail and package volumes. Package volume is up, but mail volume continues to decline. Adapting our processing infrastructure to the current volumes will ensure more efficient, cost effective operations and better service for our customers.”

Marketing mail is down more than 15 percent through June of this year compared to last year. While this is a much steeper drop than recent years, it is continuing a decade-long trend of mail volume decline for everything but packages. In other words, DBCSs have less mail to sort than they ever have before and it’s far from clear how much of that mail is ever coming back. So it stands to reason the USPS might not need as many of them.

The postal workers interviewed by Motherboard understood this, and in some cases even made the argument some DBCS machines might be of better use at other facilities.

In fact, just because a mail sorting machine is removed from one processing center doesn't mean it wont be used elsewhere, as even CNN admitted:

CNN has previously reported that union officials had said the destination of each removed machine varies. Some are scrapped entirely while some are transferred to other facilities.

According to the Postal Service, many of the letter sorting machines are being replaced with newer, more efficient machines (i.e. that require fewer workers to operate) as part of a multi-year effort to better accommodate increasing package volume:

[W]e are retiring older, out of date equipment so that we can expand our newer sorting equipment that can handle as many as 30,000 letters an hour. This will increase our capacity and our efficiency to handle increased package volume as well as any current letter and flat volume. This is a multi-year effort that prepares us for the future.

What about recent mail delays?
First, it's important to note that mail delays are nothing new, as NPR notes:

Any other year, a steady underperformance of mail delivery in swing states would go unnoticed. This year, though, the delivery rates released Monday have taken on outsized importance: They may foreshadow ballot counting controversies to come.

However, we're in a global pandemic, which is exacerbating problems:

On-time mail delivery nationally already is suffering as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, presenting a worrisome picture for November as a rapidly rising number of people choose to steer clear of COVID-19 and vote by mail.

Case in point: Fedex, a private company, has been suffering from mail delays due to the virus. In no way can this be attributed to sabotage by Trump, as is being implied in discussions of similar delays at USPS:

While every U.S. package carrier is fighting to manage unexpected demand for home deliveries of bicycles, patio furniture, medicine and food, FedEx entered the pandemic in turnaround mode and is grappling with an inflexible business structure that is contributing to service disruptions in California and Michigan.

For two Mondays in a row, FedEx told San Bernardino, California-based Pacific Mountain Logistics it would not make scheduled Ground pickups until Thursday, Chief Executive B.J. Patterson said.

The delay is not limited to FedEx’s Ground division that focuses on e-commerce packages. Service at FedEx Express - which caters mostly to business deliveries - also is affected, said Patterson, who has been a FedEx customer for a decade.

Now, it is true that Postmaster General DeJoy's streamlining efforts may result in mail being delayed by a day if there is already a delay getting it on the truck, as noted by the Washington Post:

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told employees to leave mail behind at distribution centers if it delayed letter carriers from their routes, according to internal USPS documents obtained by The Washington Post...

“If the plants run late, they will keep the mail for the next day,” according to a document titled, “New PMG’s [Postmaster General’s] expectations and plan.” Traditionally, postal workers are trained not to leave letters behind and to make multiple delivery trips to ensure timely distribution of letters and parcels.

However, as alluded to in the document, the purpose of this is to encourage workers to meet deadlines, reduce the need for perpetual overtime (a significant driver of costs), and ultimately make the Postal Service more efficient. One can't on the one hand decry the poor financial state of the self-sufficient USPS and, at the same time, criticize good faith efforts to improve its operational efficiency and financial health.

What about that letter USPS sent warning states it may not be able to deliver ballots in time?
CNN, Washington Post, and others have used these notices as proof that Postmaster General DeJoy's reforms to the Postal Service are designed to disenfranchise voters. The problem, as the Wall Street Journal notes, is that these notices predate DeJoy's tenure as Postmaster General:

In reality, it’s closer to the opposite: an attempt by the USPS to forestall state election failure. The letters were planned before the new Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, took the reins on June 15. [USPS General Counsel Thomas Marshall] sent nearly identical advice to election officials in a May letter posted at USPS.com. Strange public conspiracy.

“To account for delivery standards and to allow for contingencies (e.g., weather issues or unforeseen events), voters should mail their return ballots at least 1 week prior to the due date,” Mr. Marshall wrote in May. The same rule, he added, should apply to blank ballots: “The Postal Service also recommends that state or local election officials use FirstClass Mail and allow 1 week for delivery to voters.”

Indeed, the Wall Street Journal notes that New York State's own Board of Elections co-chair (and a Democrat) testified that New York should mail ballots to voters sooner, because 7 days isn't enough time for them to be received and returned:

That seven-day deadline “is unrealistic,” Douglas Kellner, co-chair of the New York State Board of Elections, testified in court last month. The state board has argued for moving it back to 14 days, in line with the USPS suggestion of allowing seven days for delivery each way.

In short, the Postal Service's notice is intended to help ensure more ballots are counted, not the other way around. The Postal Service has given consistent advice for months that states shouldn't wait until the last minute to get ballots in voters' hands.

[deadheadskier]

.

[Highway Star]

Funny how the media has already totally dropped this. I think they got played.