If you listen to the news today, you will hear that President Trump is trying to undermine the Post Office so that it will suppress the mail in voting in November. It's such nonsense, but the Democrats and the media push it because they think no one ever listens or thinks. Here are a few actual facts:
1. The US Postal Service has been losing billions of dollars each year, and the loses are getting worse.
2. The main reason why the USPS loses so much money is that it handles less and less mail, particularly first class mail. The highest amount of mail was handled by the post office in 2001. Since then the volume of mail has declined by just under half: about 48%. As the mail handled goes down, the costs don't really fall by much. There are still letter carriers who have to make the same rounds. There are still post offices that have to be open during business hours. There are still mail sorters and shippers and the like. So revenue has decreased a lot while costs have only decreased a little, and in 2001, the post office was already losing money.
3. Things like email and text messages have replaced letters. Fedex and UPS have taken a very big chunk of the package delivery requirements. The future of the post office as presently configured is grim.
4. On top of everything else, the virus hit this year and it disrupted mail service. Letter carriers were missing work. Post offices were short handed or closed in certain areas. In New York City, at the height of the virus, there were many days where whole apartment buildings just didn't get mail deliveries.
5. Because of the sorry state of the post office, President Trump appointed a new head of the postal service and gave him a mandate to reduce costs so that they would be more in line with the reduced revenue that USPS was producing. That has led to reductions in overtime, less frequent deliveries in certain areas, reductions in sorting facilities since the volume of mail is so much less, and the like. None of this has anything to do with voting by mail.
6. Many states either already have some voting by mail or are enacting it for 2020 due to the virus. The thinking is that while it is safe for people to go to supermarkets , or to go to outdoor restaurants or even indoor restaurants, or to go to get haircuts, shop for clothes, take a plane or a train, or many other activities wearing a mask or not, it is just too dangerous for these very same people to go to a polling place for ten minutes while wearing a mask to vote. Whether voting by mail is wise is a subject for a different post; let's just accept that states are increasing the availability of this possibility.
7. The states that allow voting by mail in whole or in part all have rules regarding when the voter must complete the ballot and when it must be received by the state authorities. For example, some states require that for a ballot to be valid, it must be postmarked by election day and received by two days after the election.
8. Yesterday, the post office informed states that some of the new rules being put in place may not be capable of being met by USPS. For example, it may be that mail collected on election day won't be post marked until the next day or that such mail won't be delivered to the election authorities until some time after the deadline. This warning led to a major uproar from the Democrats and the media. But think what it means.
9. As states put voting by mail in place, they just have to allow more time for the USPS to do its job. Suppose the state says that votes will not be counted unless they are postmarked by the day after the election and received within a week after that. The post office can meed those deadlines. The state government just has to adjust its rules and no ballots need be disqualified because of a delay by USPS.
10. There is plenty of time to have the states fix the rules so that no one loses his or her right to vote. Instead, the Democrats are busy screaming about voter suppression. Remember, in most of the states with voting by mail, the Democrats are in control. They can easily modify the rules.
11. As these basic facts become clear, the media and Democrats are already moving on a bit. Now they are screaming about people on social security whose checks will come later. That is an argument that only a fool would buy. First of all, the vast majority of social security recipients get their payments by direct deposit. The days of the social security check are long since past. Even those who still get checks will find that if the checks are delayed, it will only be by one day. There will be a one time one day delay and then the checks will go back to arriving a month apart as before. This is hardly cause for massive upset.
So there is no move to suppress voting in November despite the claims of the media and the Democrats. Indeed, the charge is so moronic that they should be embarrassed just making it.
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