Tuesday, August 18, 2020

Don't Blame Donald Trump if the Post Office Loses Your Vote

Just minutes before the start of primetime coverage of the first night of the 4 night Democrat Infomercial "Vote For Biden Because He's Not Trump" was to begin, Conspiracy Central's Joy Reid on her new MSNBC Crazy Negro Hour ramped up dangerously irresponsible rhetoric and conspiracy theories by her and her guests that would make even Ricky Maddow blush.

Not only were they openly accusing DJT of dismantling our democratic process before our very eyes and of intentionally destroying the Postal Service to rig the 2020 election, but of taking calls and directives from authoritarian world leaders on how to ensure he doesn’t leave office in January.

Worst yet, this evening's most renowned Crazy Negro was the unhinged fear-mongering liar, Russiagate conspiracy theorist Malcolm Nance, who said if worse comes to worse and DJT wins, Americans will have to take to the streets like in Belarus and try to remove Trump from office by force. Video Here.

By now you've probably heard from various soft skulls like CNN's Tater Stelter that DJT and the Postmaster General "are sabotaging democracy in plain sight" through a mix of nefarious ploys ranging from removing "blue Post Office drop boxes" to scrapping mail-sorting machines to allegedly mandating a slowdown in delivering the mail,  supposedly doing everything possible to block what is expected to be a historically high level of mail-in ballots.

The truth is far less incendiary, though still troubling. As USA Today concluded in a fact-check of various rumors floating around:
...."it is false to say mail is intentionally being slowed, despite reports that a new USPS [United States Postal Service] system might inherently cause delays. 
The Trump administration said the president did not direct USPS to slow down its deliveries, and USA TODAY found no evidence of that claim being true either."
In any case, as NPR and other supposed news outlets have reported, the president has said he'd sign a bill including more funding for the Postal Service, including aid dedicated to processing any surge in mail-in votes.

Here's a little bit of math that should give voters succor.
In 2016, about 140 million total votes were cast in the presidential election, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Now assume, for the sake of argument, that the same number of votes will be cast this year as in 2016. 
Even if all voters used the mail and posted their ballots on exactly the same day, that would comprise only 30 percent of the amount of mail the USPS says it processes every single day.
So if the USPS screws up delivering votes in a timely and efficient manner this fall, it won't be because of any sinister actions by the White House.

It will be because of longstanding, well-documented managerial and cultural problems that gave rise to such stock portrayals of letter carriers as Seinfeld's Newman and Cheers' Cliff Clavin.


It may take weeks for a final tally of all votes this fall depending on the closeness of the race on Election Day, and that waiting period may be excruciating to live through. But that has less to do with the USPS and more to do with local and state voting boards.

For those who are interested in the post office's chronically bad performance and "unsustainable" situation, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has produced a long list of studies on where the problems come from and how they might be addressed. The short version is that Congress and government workers unions have blocked all sorts of serious reforms to an operation that has seen a 33 percent decline in mail volume since 2006.

If the election is stolen or rigged in any way, you can bet it's done by our friends who lost touch with reality, and vow revenge for what they believe was stolen from them in 2016.

[Reason Mag]
[MRC]
[GAO]
~ Thank You WHATFINGER NEWS for the Linkage! ~

No comments:

Post a Comment