TGHusker
New member
I thought this issue was worthy of its own thread. I think this will become the 'scandal' of this election cycle - although with Trump there can be many more before the election. Trump is trying to cast doubt on the election and on mail in ballots specifically on one side and he is working the other side to insure that the post office cannot deliver.
Perhaps we can keep USPO issues on this thread while posting other "normal' (yea nothing is normal this year) campaign/election news on the main 2020 election thread.
Here is a sampling of articles today
USPO DEFUNDING
https://news.yahoo.com/chaos-confusion-cost-cutting-turmoil-210307565.html
SORTING MACHINES DEACTIVATED
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/n7wk9z/the-post-office-is-deactivating-mail-sorting-machines-ahead-of-the-election
SWING STATE VOTES MAY NOT BE COUNTED
https://theweek.com/speedreads/931266/pennsylvania-ballots-might-not-delivered-time-counted-postal-service-warns
Obama speaks out:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/obama-trump-trying-actively-kneecap-postal-service-affect-2020-election-n1236758
Perhaps we can keep USPO issues on this thread while posting other "normal' (yea nothing is normal this year) campaign/election news on the main 2020 election thread.
Here is a sampling of articles today
USPO DEFUNDING
https://news.yahoo.com/chaos-confusion-cost-cutting-turmoil-210307565.html
The United States Postal Service has possibly never been more important, or more embattled.
The 245-year-old organization has faced years of derision from President Trump. And as the election nears with his prospects uncertain, Trump has intensified his unfounded claims against voting by mail and his institutional attacks on the government service charged with getting ballots to voters and back.
Election officials expect to send a record number of mail ballots to voters this fall, as states seek to avoid the spread of the deadly coronavirus at in-person polling places. But the more prominent role of the postal service, formed by the Second Continental Congress at the start of the Revolutionary War, comes as it weathers more serious challenges than snow, rain, heat or gloom of night.
The pandemic has led to staff shortages and a steep decline in letter mail, the most profitable part of the service, worsening its precarious financial situation. And now a close Trump ally and GOP donor put in charge of the agency has introduced unpopular policies that have delayed mail and raised concerns that voters won't get their ballots on time.
Members of Congress in both parties have called on the organization to reverse the changes, and Democrats have asked for an investigation into the motives and fallout of the policies. The moves have been portrayed as cost cutting at a struggling institution, but critics say the president and his allies are attempting to undermine faith in the postal service — which 91% of Americans view favorably — to suppress the November vote and, ultimately, to move one step closer to privatizing the organization.
SORTING MACHINES DEACTIVATED
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/n7wk9z/the-post-office-is-deactivating-mail-sorting-machines-ahead-of-the-election
The United States Postal Service is removing mail sorting machines from facilities around the country without any official explanation or reason given, Motherboard has learned through interviews with postal workers and union officials. In many cases, these are the same machines that would be tasked with sorting ballots, calling into question promises made by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy that the USPS has “ample capacity” to handle the predicted surge in mail-in ballots.
SWING STATE VOTES MAY NOT BE COUNTED
https://theweek.com/speedreads/931266/pennsylvania-ballots-might-not-delivered-time-counted-postal-service-warns
he United States Postal Service has warned that in Pennsylvania, some mail-in ballots may not be delivered in time to be counted this November.
In a July letter to Pennsylvania State Secretary Kathy Boockvar, USPS general counsel Thomas Marshall described the "risk that ballots requested near the deadline under state law will not be returned by mail in time to be counted under your laws as we understand them," NBC News reports.
The USPS also described Pennsylvania's current deadlines as "incongruous with the Postal Service's delivery standards," per Axios. Voters in the swing state can request a mail-in ballot up to Oct. 27, and they have to be received by 8:00 p.m. on Election Day, according to The Hill.
But officials in the state are looking to extend the deadline to receive mail-in ballots three days, with Boockvar raising concern in a court filing that "voters who apply for mail-in ballots in the last week of the application period and return their completed ballot by mail will, through no fault of their own, likely be disenfranchised," CNN reports.
Obama speaks out:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/obama-trump-trying-actively-kneecap-postal-service-affect-2020-election-n1236758
Former President Barack Obama, in an interview released Friday, slammed President Donald Trump for trying to “actively kneecap the Postal Service” to affect mail-in voting in the 2020 election and urged lawmakers and citizens to take actions to “protect the integrity” of the election.
Obama, speaking on the podcast of his former campaign manager David Plouffe, was responding to recent comments by Trump, who said earlier this week that holding up emergency funds for the U.S. Postal Service would ensure that the post office would be unable to “take all of these millions and millions of ballots.”
Obama, responding to those remarks, accused Republicans of having tried for years "to discourage people’s votes from counting in all kinds of ways,” like voter identification laws and gerrymandering, but said Trump’s threats were “unique to modern history.”
“What we've never seen before is a president say, ‘I'm going to try to actively kneecap the Postal Service to encourage voting, and I will be explicit about the reason I'm doing it.’ That's sort of unheard of, right?” Obama said. “And we also have not had an election in the midst of a pandemic that is still deadly and killing a lot of people.”
“So in that circumstance, the thing I'm most worried about is … how do we protect the integrity of the election process? How do we make sure that people's votes are counted? How do we police and monitor how state officials are setting up polling places and ensuring that every vote is counted?” he continued.
Trump has so far resisted congressional Democrats' efforts to add billions of dollars to the Postal Service budget to help fund the extra work needed to process more voting by mail as a result of the coronavirus pandemic — although he later suggested he would not veto such funding if it were part of the next coronavirus relief package.
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