The US Postal Service effort to develop a sweeping new system for verifying mail ballots has invited a host of IT concerns among agency officials, with some describing the process internally as a “sh*t show,” according to a new whistleblower report released Tuesday by a Democratic senator.
The unnamed whistleblower is alleging that some of the procedures USPS is planning – under mandates put forward by President Donald Trump – have been hidden from the public. Those procedures will make an already complicated and risky plan even more vulnerable to potential mass disenfranchisement, the whistleblower says.
The new report – which was assembled by the whistleblowers’ lawyers and released by Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal – comes as multiple courts are considering the legality of the proposal, which would require that states submit to USPS lists of their mail-in voters. The agency will not deliver ballots for states if there are any discrepancies between the voter information in the USPS system and what’s picked up by agency scanners on the envelopes of the ballots.
So that’s the plan - when Democratic states don’t comply to hand over their voter records, the postal service simply refuses to deliver their ballots from the Board of Elections. They can’t vote if they never get the ballot in the first place.
Must be Tuesday because that’s another profound infringement of civil liberties.
If there are discrepancies like addresses? That means my mail in ballot is going to be flagged, because my house is in address limbo (used to be an apartment but not anymore, and USPS has rejected packages being sent to me because I did not put “Apt 1” at the end of my address).
This is just going to disenfranchise those living between addresses and people caught in red tape living in apartment houses.
Truly a shit show. I’m voting in person from now until question marks.
Not just that but any black hole you might find yourself in when two totally separate government systems don’t agree on one particular detail and neither agency wants to take ownership of the problem so it never gets fixed.
The big benefit of mail in voting is that I don’t need to prepare in advance of going to the polls, or stand in a big line. I can sit down with my ballot at the kitchen table and read about issues or candidates as I fill it in. Once I’ve finished at my leisure, I take the ballot sealed in the return envelope and drop it off at a nearby polling place - most libraries are great for this and have drop boxes at the ready for a few weeks leading up to Election Day.
Even if I procrastinate to the last minute I can drop the sealed ballot at an in-person polling place on Election Day without waiting in the big line. Mail-in voting is still excellent even if you cut USPS out of the picture for the return portion. Maybe better to call it Mail-Out Voting and make that the standard.
Unless you’re out of state on deployment. Good luck getting Hegseth’s military to deliver any ballots.
Hard agree with loving the vote-by-mail process, especially given the complexity of California ballots. But it sounds like they’re messing with getting our ballots mailed out to us in the first place. That means we would have to show up and vote a provisional ballot in person. Blargh.
State could sue but not until the harm was done.
Hmm, I guess you’re right. I guess I expected it to be on the return trip so that voters think they were successful and don’t follow up.
If everyone is forced to vote provisionally, then not only will turnout be low, there will all sorts of further lies about how the provisional process is fraudulent.
… judge last week froze the mandates that the states use the system if they want USPS to deliver their ballots, but said USPS could still offer the portal to states that voluntarily want to upload the mail voter information. The Justice Department is appealing that ruling.
… USPS leadership was dismissive of concerns, and, according to the report “insisted that it was easy to understand what was needed and also that there was no time to write down the requirements.”
… When election officials bring ballots to their USPS site for delivery, either the entire batch of ballot envelopes or a sampling will be physically scanned – depending on where the ballots are being dropped, according to the whistleblower. If just a single ballot envelope scan does not align with the information in the portal, USPS will refuse to deliver the entire batch of ballots while the discrepancy is being sorted out.
Neat. I wonder whether they will even tell anyone when their ballots are invalidated.
There will be so many lawsuits over purposely caused issues and other crises by November, the court will cancel it all and maga will say it’s just like Zelenskyy did so it’s fine. Two months to see if wrong!
If we’re not facing an active, actual, missiles-in-the-air, tanks-on-the-border invasion and they try to pull that shit, then they’re even dumber than I thought.
I’m more worried they’ll invoke FDR saying he did it and was considered a generally great president
What they’re going to do is “disappear” or delay mailed ballots based on the party the voter is registered as and/or their district and which way that district tends to vote. Not all of them, that would be too obvious. Just enough of them to tilt the election to the repubs.
Don’t vote by mail at all if you have any other choice. If you do have a mail-in ballot, hand-deliver it to the election center (the place you would go to vote early) in your city or failing that, drop it in a ballot box, NOT a PO Box. If you’re forced to do it by mail, mail it as soon as you possibly can, then I’m pretty sure there’s a way you can call and verify it was received at the election center.
But again, don’t vote by mail if at all possible. And if possible, go vote early rather than on Election Day–god only knows what they’ve got planned for that day. If you can, provide rides for people who need them so they can vote early too.
“Shit show” is too charitable a term for something that’s being sabotaged on purpose. How the fuck is it that people are still giving the Trump regime any sort of benefit of the doubt?!
It’s just the racists and people too stupid to see through the bullshit left supporting him. Unfortunately, that seems to be 1/3 of us.
Voting in person isn’t much better when those machines are owned by musk and other far right extremist oligarchs. I seriously doubt the results of the last election. I don’t think we can not vote by mail where I live anymore. I trust the mail in ballots more than these shadowy voting machines
The states should state soliciting private delivery companies to deliver the ballots. It may be expensive but then send the bill to the federal gov afterwards.
This is why I hand-delivered mine to a ballot drop-box instead of mailing it. I do not fucking trust the USPS to handle my election materials anymore.
Unfortunately that is the point. Even if they don’t do anything, they have already undermined the public trust which will probably already disenfranchise many voters.
I haven’t had faith in the USPS’s handling of election materials since orangeboi appointed DeJoy as postmaster general right before the 2020 election, with the express purpose of trying to fuck with the election. There’s a new postmaster general (David Steiner), and by all accounts he’s even worse than DeJoy.
They’re talking about the mailing out of the ballots. You won’t get a ballot to fill out unless you live in a state where you can print your own.
described as a shit show
I feel ya buddy.
