US Postal Service Run by Trump Loyalist Ousts Top Officials, Announces Major Overhaul Amid Election Reliant on Mail-in Voting

NPR adds: “The changes he has implemented have not assuaged those concerns. ‘Donald Trump is sabotaging the U.S Postal Service in an attempt to rig the election in his favor,’ tweeted Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, which was the first all vote-by-mail state, earlier this week. State and local election officials are also worried about the ramifications of the measures. ‘I’m very concerned that delays in postal delivery is going to have a negative effect on absentee ballots and vote-by-mail elections,’ Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman told NPR last week.”

Said Postmaster General Louis DeJoy on Friday night: “First, while I certainly have a good relationship with the President of the United States, the notion that I would ever make decisions concerning the Postal Service at the direction of the President, or anyone else in the Administration, is wholly off-base. I serve at the pleasure of the Governors of the Postal Service, a group that is bipartisan by statute and that will evaluate my performance in a nonpartisan fashion. The Postal Service itself has a proud tradition of being a nonpartisan organization, which I believe is one reason why the Postal Service is consistently rated by the public as the most trusted federal entity. I intend to uphold the trust that has been placed in me by the Governors, and to fulfill my responsibilities to this organization and to the public interest, by trying to make good decisions through the exercise of my best judgment and business acumen gained through 35 years of commercial experience, and not based upon any partisanship.”

“ Second, let me be clear that with regard to Election Mail, the Postal Service and I are fully committed to fulfilling our role in the electoral process,” DeJoy added. “If public policy makers choose to utilize the mail as a part of their election system, we will do everything we can to deliver Election Mail in a timely manner consistent with our operational standards. We do ask election officials and voters to be mindful of the time that it takes for us to deliver ballots, whether it is a blank ballot going to a voter or a completed ballot going back to election officials. We have delivery standards that have been in place for many years. These standards have not changed, and despite any assertions to the contrary, we are not slowing down Election Mail or any other mail. Instead, we continue to employ a robust and proven process to ensure proper handling of all Election Mail.”

We are fucked. This is how he wins.

If there is a hell, I hope these people rot there.

If not, I hope their deaths are long and painful.

THIS IS WHY MAIL IN VOTING SHOULD NOT BE IMPLEMENTED!!! IT'S A DUMPSTER FIRE.

The USPS has been a shit show for quite some time, ask anyone who's changed addresses in the last few years. I've had certified mail never delivered multiple times- if something's actually important I send it with FedEx now.

R5 here- and by never delivered, I mean I paid to have a tracking number put on the envelope and the letter just disappears, never delivered and never returned. I get to go wait for an hour at the Post Office so someone can poke around on an ancient computer and tell me "well, it was scanned in Ypsilanti two weeks ago, I don't see any record that it ever left Ypsilanti, you could request an investigation with the Postmaster there."

I.e. they lost that shit and have no way to find it.

We know.

Trump is tampering with the U.S. Mail so nobody can vote his ass out.

F & F Boris @ r4 and r5.

The myth that the U.S Postal Service is inadequate and mail-in voting results in fraud is FAKE NEWS Trump uses so he can weaponize the greatest tool at his disposal to stop his election loss.

I live in Oregon and absolutely love vote by mail. I can take my time and research and vote when it suits me. I then walk it down to a drop off box.

Republicans are truly despicable. They prove it every day.

R8 Bitch it is not. Try to send a certified letter and tell me how that goes.

Also, try getting a fucking refund (you can't.)

I want my money back!

This is the worst idea ever. We have had cases of mail carriers throwing away/forgetting ballots and elected officials engaging in ballot harvesting. After election day, it will take weeks to count them all, maybe even months! People won't be able to stand the ambiguity after being faced a pandemic and economic insecurity for almost one year straight, and people are going to just crack. There will be murder and mayhem in the streets, the likes we've never seen because both sides will accuse each other of election meddling. Civil war may be on the horizon.

Me, too, r9.

But my state allows you to drop off your mail-in ballots at the live polls on Election Day, which I always do to get the media endorsements and news that break late.

No WAY am I going to mail in my vote this year. Trump is tampering.

I strongly recommend everyone votes in-person or hands their pre-filled mail-in ballot to the election workers on Election Day.

Find out how your state is handling ballots this year:

Bitch @ r11 it is so!

I send and receive mail all the time without any delays or problems. UNTIL Trump started tampering with the mail last month.

FUCK YOU, BORIS.

America, you in danger gurl.

Hey asshole(s) @R8/R14:

Just yesterday, I received this letter from my US congressman:

"For the past 2 years, I have been working with Landale Borough Mayor Gary Herbert and Pennsylvania State Representative Steve Malagari to address the issues that Lansdale Borough residents have raised regarding mail delivery from the United States Postal Service. Many of you have reached out to me directly to share stories of incorrectly delivered mail, damaged mail, late mail or no mail at all. This problem is widespread in the area and it is having a negative impact on individuals, businesses and local government.'

The letter continues on for 2 more paragraphs.

Still think this is fake news? You're no better than that fucking idiot Trump.

Vote Early OR Drop Your Ballot in A Box Provided.

Mail is piling up.

Also, R8/R14: I registered to vote by mail and received an acknowledgement from the county that my request had been received and I would be mailed a ballot to vote in the PA primary in May.

It never arrived and had to go to my local polling place and cast a provisional ballot. It took them 3 full weeks to count that ballot.

The general election in November is going to be the biggest mind fuck the US has ever seen.

[quote]We have had cases of mail carriers throwing away/forgetting ballots and elected officials engaging in ballot harvesting

DEAD GIVEAWAY, BORIS. This is FAKE NEWS and U.S. civil warmongering very obviously directed by Moscow. One thing that Trump operatives and Russian propagandists do is PROJECT — they accuse their political opponents of the exact, same crimes they're committing themselves. Hence, "Crooked Hillary," "Hillary killed Vince Foster" and "Obama and Hillary will assassinate Trump."

VLADIMIR PUTIN is the one who's been caught stuffing ballot boxes and tampering with votes.

THERE IS NO CASE OF MAIL CARRIERS THROWING AWAY OR FORGETTING BALLOTS. Trump administrators are the only provable suspects now.

F&F the discord propaganda troll @ r12, it's taking advantage of Muriel's weekend off.

R14 Bitch, 'tis. This predates Trump.

I cannot fucking believe the new Democratic Party official dogma is "everything's fine with the Post Office." The USPS has been a national scandal since the 80s. The fuck are you all smoking?

trump is telling us that mail in voting is unsafe because he and his minions plan to make it unsafe. Vote early and in person if you can.

R22 I get that Drumpf is being Drumpf, but that doesn't really make sense. Wouldn't it he be promoting mail in ballots if he was scheming to make it unsafe, as you say?

[quote]Try to send a certified letter and tell me how that goes.

I send my federal, state and local taxes by certified mail every quarter. I have for two decades and have never had a problem.

I keep thinking of that scene from "The Plot Against America" where Republican operatives/Lindbergh supporters steal ballots from boxes in a heavily Democratic ward in Newark and dump them in a hole.

Will life be imitating art in November?

The Republicans have been fucking with the Postal Service (a constitutionally guaranteed SERVICE for Americans, not a profit-making scheme) since at least 2006, when they passed an insane requirement that the USPS fund retiree health benefits for the next 75 years. The goal is presumably to send business to private delivery companies (in which they, for example DeJoy himself, are heavily invested)—as well as screwing up the mail-in vote.

Trump is now able to rule his administration like a mafia don or dictator. "Loyalty"... except he himself is loyal to nobody.

Four more years of Trump and we will no longer have a democracy.

R24 Congratulations to you! It is not that way for the rest of us.

R20 Here's some articles about what a stupid idea mail-in ballots are, you crazed loon. And Democrats will be blamed for it all. Trust that!

And some more:

Oh, and this too:

End the secret ballot. Only when republicans have to stand up and be counted publicly will this shame to our country (violent one party rule by a mafia gang) be ended.

The Republicans are fixing the election right before our eyes.

R32 Absolutely the fuck not!

Their not even trying to hide their corruption from the public.

They're

Correct r36 ! Glad to keep you occupied!

R37 I'm surprised you don't have me blocked. You must have gotten lonely.

[quote] I keep thinking of that scene from "The Plot Against America" where Republican operatives/Lindbergh supporters steal ballots from boxes in a heavily Democratic ward in Newark and dump them in a hole.

I keep thinking of PJ Soles in Carrie (wearing a read MAGA cap) swapping ballots at the polls.

It has to be a landslide for Biden or they will be in court for months.

R40 There will be lawsuits left and right regardless. We'll all vote, but this election will be decided by the courts.

Yeah, just like the massive Rethug/Russian fraud in 2016 was "decided by the courts."

Fat lot of good that did.

R42 I actually don't know what you're talking about. Courts weren't involved much in the Russia investigation.

R29-31, linking to right wing sites like Real Clear Politics and CNS News doesn't help your argument.

If you can vote early, do that.

If you are able, please consider working the polls on election day. We need all polling places open and fully staffed so no one has to wait hours to vote.

Stop clutching your pearls and do something to help. Sign up to volunteer at the polls. Call your rethug members of Congress and bitch at THEM about this attack on our elections.

Remind them that OUR MILITARY MEMBERS have to vote by mail when they are stationed overseas. They're all "support the troops" but that's bullshit unless they do something to protect their votes.

You can do something besides bitch here. Bitch at your rethug Congress critter, send postcards to turtle since he refuses to answer the phone and volunteer to work the polls on election day or help set up the night before.

Then bitch on here.

R34 Abraham LIncoln was not elected by secret ballot. It was an Australian thing, and like the US, the Aussies have long been controlled by right wing politics and media to which no real alternative voice is heard. The secret ballot cannot be made fraud-free.

If you think republicans wouldn't DARE fix a postal vote, get a clue. They've been doing that since the 90s in Florida.

Trump is like tar baby and the briar patch about mail in voting. Dems of course fall for it.

Mutherfucking FUCKS

This is the same shit they pulled in 2016 - predicting the other side will perpetrate fraud, and then doing so themselves.

This will be 2000 all over again with Trump re-elected and Democrats screaming mail-in conspiracies.

R48 You can't think of anything better than calling him Tar baby? How ancient are you?

We won’t have a winner declared until late December and in January Trump will be sworn in again. They’ll be writing books about this election and everything that went wrong decades from now. Republicans will point out that they were the ones against national mail-in putting Democrats on the defensive. Then we’ll have the far Left Bernie nuts screaming that Democrats picked an establishment candidate and we’re right back where we started. It’s going to be a November 2000 disaster.

R52 You are 100% correct.

It may seem audacious. After all, aren't most postal workers unionized? But the handling of the ballots will be done by a special group!

Study Floyd Carollo v. Xavier Suarez.

The High Road SUCKS

So to sum up OP's story: the problem the USA faces today is that the majority of people with money and power have now decided it is no longer convenient for the country to be a democracy.

I still don't understand how they are able to slow the mail down just because? And out in the open too.

This is out in the open corruption they're committing. How can they do this and not be held accountable for it? This shit us beyond insane. They're actually fixing the 2020 election out in the open for the entire world to see and nothing's being done about it. How the fuck is this possible? They're supposed to be working for the people and instead they're committing fraud with something that's written in stone in our constitution.

Where the fuck are the checks and balances to stop this corruption? This shit is beyond insane. I don't understand how this is allowed to happen?

I guess you're not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

I will put on a fucking hazmat suit and crawl on my hands and knees over hot coals to my polling station to personally vote against this psycho muthafucker.

I haven't had any issues with the US postal service at all. My mail is always pretty fast.

Pete Buttigieg tweeted on the 7th:

The president's re-election strategy seems to depend on making it harder for Americans to vote.

We can't let him succeed.

R60 The voting machines are probably rigged. Didn't Ivanka some how get a patent on some voting machines?

Do you really think the Russians or Chinese won't send fake ballots to people's houses? You all are delusional to think it's 100% safe.

[quote]The USPS has been a shit show for quite some time, ask anyone who's changed addresses in the last few years. I've had certified mail never delivered multiple times- if something's actually important I send it with FedEx now.

I have the opposite problem. I've moved four times in the last ten years and the post office keeps finding me.

I will say that I've had to use mail-forwarding twice in the last 6 months - once for me and another for a relative. I still have access to the old address and mailbox.

About half was forwarded - and some really important stuff never got there.

The Republicans have been gunning for the USPS for close to a decade. They want to shut it down and privatize it. It's disgraceful. They want to gut any public service and put it into the hands of a few.

How many times have they talked about ended SS and Medicare? If any Dems breathed a word about that, it would be brought up over and over.

Republicans get away with EVERYTHING - and that's part of the problem.

[quote]Where the fuck are the checks and balances to stop this corruption?

I'll look into that.

I am hoping a gift I mailed got to its intended recipient. It's a gift certificate, so I sent it in a padded envelope you could send a single CD in. His mother told me she'd let me know when it got to her house. It's been four days and I haven't heard from her. It only went one zip code away, which used to mean next-day delivery.

I have had Amazon packages stall in Michigan for a month and only got to me after filing a complaint with USPS. Several eBay customers of mine have contacted me that they haven’t received their package. Items that should take 3-4 days are taking weeks or not delivered at all.

Why are Democrats so powerless? And how it it that Republicans get away with everything like R66 pointed out? Why are they able to mess with something enshrined in the US constitution and nothing's done about it?

In some case Amazon deliveries may be the fault of Amazon's own delivery service—at least this was the impression I was given by our office manager last year when I wasn't getting deliveries; she said other people had had the same problem.

[quote] Several eBay customers of mine have contacted me that they haven’t received their package. Items that should take 3-4 days are taking weeks or not delivered at all.

I'm having the same problem. I've already had to issue refunds to 2 buyers and am now considering not listing anything until this election is over. This business with DeJoy and the USPS is downright criminal.

[quote]About half was forwarded - and some really important stuff never got there.

Some stuff is not allowed to be forwarded. If you are no longer at that address, its "return to sender" whether they have a forwarding address on file or not. Problem comes up if new people at old address don't put your mail back for return and just toss it.

r68 here. My package arrived today—delivered on a Sunday, no less. I mailed it on Tuesday, though. Five days to go to an adjacent zip code in the same city, which used to mean next-day delivery.

They'll never get a correct vote count in November. They're going to be waiting for ballots for days, and finding ballots stuffed in Janitor's closets for weeks.

Sounds like the best thing to do is to fill out the mail-in ballot and drop it off at the polling place in person.

I really hope those 23 fired executives litigate THE FUCK out of this fat bastard for using his position as a civil servant to advance political interests. LOCK HIM UP!!!

The USPS is a reliable way to vote. I trust it. However, to dismiss the obvious problems of the USPS is stupid. Most mail delivery drivers are driving LLVs that have not been replaced since 1989. Many of them do not work properly, because those parts are no longer available so they have to work with vehicles that shouldn't be in circulation to begin with.

Our mail processors and carriers are overworked as it is, working with outdated equipment. They need to hire more personnel if national voting by mail is to take place.

The USPS already failed a CBS simulation of voting by mail.

Hint: They lost and misplaced the mail, and took forever to deliver the mail they didn't lose.

[quote]they lost and misplaced the mail, and took forever to deliver the mail they didn't lose.

Probably because those poor workers are working on insane expectations with insane deadlines. The routes keep getting bigger and they expect you to deliver thousands of envelopes, on top of it certified mail, express, and packages.

No wonder mail gets left behind.

I can’t believe that this underhanded kind of stuff is so easy for people to do. I would like to vote by mail so that I don’t have to get sick because some asshole needs his rights not to wear a mask. I am so sick of this selfishness. I’m sick of people trying to create an oligarchy out of what was formally the most beautiful democracy the world is ever seen. Make America great again requires a complete change in the reprentatives of our government. But I wonder how much the current team in Washington will steal on their way out. We better recheck the pictures of Jackie Kennedy’s tour of the White House to make sure they didn’t steal all of that too.

The scary thing is that you don't have to do much to strain the USPS. The elections will coincide with the Holidays, the USPS workforce will be stretched to the max and on top of it you will have the mail in vote. The USPS can refuse to hire seasonal workers, and strain the 24 hour cycle (the flow of mail) to cause chaos. States would be wise to accept mail in vote much earlier,like in September, in order to offset any stunts by the Trump administration. Early mail voting is the key. Especially in places like California.

***PLEASE READ*** A note of caution about voting by mail. Do you remember how you signed your voter registration card WHEN you registered to vote? If your signature on your mailed ballot doesn't match EXACTLY the signature on record, in most cases your ballot will be considered invalid and won't be counted. For example, you signed your voter registration card as "John Q. Voter, Jr". but you signed your ballot as "John Voter, Jr", omitting the middle initial. Because of this there's a high likelihood your ballot will not be allowed to be counted because of the signature mismatch. I've worked for two Election Boards in two separate states helping count mail-in ballots and it shocked me how many ballots get rejected because of this simple mistake. Sadly, most voters aren't even aware of the need to have an exact signature match. In the past, mail-in ballots were not in significant numbers to affect most election decisions. The votes cast on election day at the precincts were the majority of votes and races could mostly be decided on those votes alone. Now with the surge of interest in mail-in ballots, they will become significantly more important. So, again, the signature has to match and most people have no idea how they exactly signed when they registered, Do you?

I never had problem with the mail until a month ago when Trump hired his crony to oversee the post office and started tampering with it.. That asshole has cut back the hours of postal workers and cut back its finances. Voting by mail is the most accurate way to vote because your ballot can be traced. Not so with electronic voting machines which I guarantee that Trump is willing to let Russia hack.

R83 is right. Signature matching might be this election’s “hanging chads”. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court is Republican.

I’m not voting by mail. I’m going to line up as always

Me too, R86.

I enrolled for a mailed ballot for the state primary. Received an acknowledgement from the election commissioners and said my mailed ballot would be forthcoming. It never arrived and I ended up going to the polling place anyway.

R79 can you post that stud with the big pecs, to me?

Steve Inskeep on NPR interviewed a postal workers union leader in Iowa yesterday who said that where she was mail sorting machines were being removed from facilities (on top of no overtime and other abuses). Anything to slow things down. The Trumpies must be fairly desperate if they're doing this in Iowa, though.

I think I mentioned on another thread that until maybe 3-4 weeks ago, I would get Netflix disks twice a week. I would get them on Monday, watch them Mon. night, return them Tues. , receive new ones Thurs., watch them Thurs. night, and return them Fri. morning. The last few weeks I've been getting them one week later. Now it's 8 days later!

NEW: 26 Republicans voted with Democrats 257-150 for the House postal service relief bill - a rebuke of Trump. Pelosi had expected just a handful.

All of my mail suddenly stopped sometime in July. My parents sent me a birthday card and got it back in the mail a month later with a sticker on it that said "Return to sender. Not deliverable as addressed" and then had my address printed next to it. THE EXACT ADDRESS THEY HAD WRITTEN ON THE ENVELOPE. I filed a complaint online through the USPS website and enrolled in "Informed Delivery", which (in theory) allows you to go online and see your mail before it is delivered. A few minutes later I got a call from the Postmaster at my Post office (Kingwood Texas). She apologized up and down, gave me her personal phone number and told me to call her directly if anything like that happened again or if my mail didn't come every day. God bless this woman who clearly cares about her job and doesn't want to see the USPS go to shit.

Vendors and customers where I work are also complaining in droves. Our mail isn't reaching them and theirs isn't reaching us. How in the fuck is a UNITED STATES PRESIDENT being allowed to sabotage one of the oldest federal agencies in the country??? The founding fathers must be rolling over in their graves. You bet your ass I'll be voting in person.

[quote]How in the fuck is a UNITED STATES PRESIDENT being allowed to sabotage one of the oldest federal agencies in the country???

The only question you should ever ask is: How in the fuck are so many people so morally-bankrupt and so hateful that this garbage even became president?