[Ibby]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...381_story.html:

Postal Service warns 46 states their voters could be disenfranchised by delayed mail-in ballots

Anticipating an avalanche of absentee ballots, the U.S. Postal Service recently sent detailed letters to 46 states and D.C. warning that it cannot guarantee all ballots cast by mail for the November election will arrive in time to be counted — adding another layer of uncertainty ahead of the high-stakes presidential contest.

The letters sketch a grim possibility for the tens of millions of Americans eligible for a mail-in ballot this fall: Even if people follow all of their state’s election rules, the pace of Postal Service delivery may disqualify their votes.

The Postal Service’s warnings of potential disenfranchisement came as the agency undergoes a sweeping organizational and policy overhaul amid dire financial conditions. Cost-cutting moves have already delayed mail delivery by as much as a week in some places, and a new decision to decommission 10 percent of the Postal Service’s sorting machines sparked widespread concern the slowdowns will only worsen. Rank-and-file postal workers say the move is ill-timed and could sharply diminish the speedy processing of flat mail, including letters and ballots.

With the caveat that obviously democratic voting strongholds tend to be population centers, so this is correlation but hypothetically not causation, people on twitter have overlaid that map with the pro-hillary margin in 2016:



as one of the authors of the article pointed out on twitter:

One word of caution. A lot of folks are looking at the map and saying these removals are targeted at Dem. strongholds. We don't know that. Dem. strongholds tend to be population centers. The removals may simply be following population patterns.

But on the other hand we don't *not* know that either because USPS hasn't provided any clear public rationale for why they're doing what they're doing

At the very least, making this kind of radical overhaul to a critical system in an unprecedented election year seems like a very iffy proposition. It's not clear why all these changes have to be done *right now*, rather than postponing them a year given the pandemic.

all of which, again, i would say serves fundamentally to erode public trust in the voting process and muddy the election waters. unless its an inarguable blowout landslide victory for either side, neither side is going to have faith in any result. that scares the shit outta me.