Tag Archives: Voting

So We Leave No Doubt What This Country Stands For

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This administration has shown that it will tear our democracy down. . . . So we have to get busy building it up. By pouring all of our efforts into these 76 days and by voting like never before. For Joe and Kamala and candidates up and down the ticket. So that we leave no doubt about what this country that we love stands for, today and for all our days to come. — Barack Obama

In case you missed it, a former president, a real president, addressed the nation last night from Philadelphia. It’s nineteen minutes that are worth your time.

When the Election Results Are Official

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We’ve wasted thousands of hours the past four years repeating and correcting the lies and stupidities of You Know Who. But along the way there’s been some educational value. Here’s an example from The Washington Post [with my commentary in italics]:

President Txxxx is ramping up his attacks on mail-in voting by insisting election results “must” be known on election night. “No more big election night answers?” he tweeted last month. “Ridiculous! Just a formula for RIGGING an Election . . .”

The news media have pushed back on his baseless claims of fraud. But they agree with him on one point: There is likely to be a “delay” in election results because of a surge in mail-in votes.

But that’s wrong. If results aren’t known on election night, that doesn’t mean there’s a delay. The fact is, there are never official results on election night. There never have been.

Predictions of a delay rest on a misunderstanding of the vote-counting process . . . If election-night results are considered the norm, and what happens this year is described as a “delay,” it will be easy to paint the result as problematic — and for Txxxx to continue to spread suspicions about the entire process.

Concerns about a supposed delay stem from a coronavirus-fueled interest in absentee and mail-in ballots. . . . Counting [all of] those ballots could potentially take days or weeks . . .

Yet even if [the final count] takes several weeks, that wouldn’t constitute a delay — because by law, election results aren’t official until more than a month after the election. The 12th Amendment and the accompanying Electoral Count Act of 1887 give states five weeks — this year, until Dec. 8 — to count their popular votes. That tally determines each state’s presidential electors, who cast their state’s votes six days later, on Dec. 14. Only if states miss that December deadline would election results be genuinely late.

That means all of us — politicians, the media, pundits and voters in general — need to reorient our thinking. The election is officially decided in December, not in November. There is nothing pernicious, or even unusual, about this. The only problem is one of perception.

The misperception isn’t surprising. We’ve come to expect that the media will announce the winner on election night. After all, that’s been the case for more than six decades. News outlets often report the results calculated by research groups or the Associated Press, which collect returns from individual precincts and add them up.

It’s essential for us to get this right. If we do not, we give ammunition to those who would undermine democracy by willfully [and/or foolishly] getting it wrong.

But the media results are projections based on preliminary returns rather than a certified final number. In previous years, that has been a distinction without a difference, since there was virtually no daylight between news media projections and actual results. One notable exception was the 2000 presidential election, when confusion over the Florida vote ended with the Supreme Court declaring George W. Bush the winner over Al Gore.

. . . Since 2000, Democrats have done better as later ballots are counted — the “blue shift” first identified in a 2013 paper by one of us, Edward Foley — which could significantly impact results. Hypothetically, Txxxx could be winning on election night [although he won’t be] . . . . and claim he has enough electoral college votes to declare victory. Yet after all votes are counted, Joe Biden could be [will be] the actual winner. Txxxx has been pushing the false narrative that any change after election night is fraudulent. That is unequivocally not the case. . . .

Unquote.

I don’t think it’s going to be a close election. The result will be reasonably clear on election night (technically, by early the next morning). But it’s good to be prepared when people who don’t know or care what they’re talking about start talking.

The Post Office’s Board of Governors Would Like To Hear From You

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The United States Postal Service, currently being undermined by the orange maniac in what is hopefully a self-defeating attempt to steal the election, is theoretically overseen by its Board of Governors. The Board only has seven members at the moment, five of whom are Republicans. One of the five is the Postmaster General, a wealthy Republican donor who had to be approved by the other members of the Board.

The Board’s current membership and the fact that the Board rarely meets suggest that putting pressure on the Board in order to protect the Postal Service won’t have much effect. But it won’t hurt to let them know how you feel about recent events, which include:

  • New work rules that prohibit overtime and require mail carriers to begin their routes before their trucks are fully loaded.
  • The removal of mail sorting machines and mailboxes all over the country
  • The abrupt reassignment of a number of experienced managers
  • Widespread delays, sometimes several days long, in mail delivery (affecting, for example, the Veterans Administration’s delivery of prescriptions to military veterans)
  • The cost of mailing a ballot being increased from 22 to 55 cents.
  • The president announcing that he won’t approve giving the Postal Service the funds it needs because those funds would help the Postal Service handle an unprecedented number of mail-in ballots (during a pandemic the president has made incredibly worse).

Someone on Twitter kindly supplied the contact information for six of the Board members, including their email addresses. I’ve added the Postmaster General’s:

  • Louis DeJoy, Postmaster General:  louis.dejoy@usps.gov
  • Robert Duncan, Chairman:  mduncan@inezdepositbank.com
  • John Barger:  barger.jm@gmail.com
  • Ron Bloom:  ron.bloom@brookfield.com
  • Ramon Martinez IV:  roman@rmiv.com
  • Donald L. Moak:  lee.moak@moakgroup.com
  • William Zollars:  DirectorAccessMailbox@cigna.com

The information on Twitter was hard to read and you never know how reliable anything is on the internet, so my apologies if any of these addresses are incorrect.

I’m going to send these gentlemen an email requesting that they call an emergency meeting in order to undo as many of the recent changes as possible, thus making sure that the Postal Service is able to fulfill its statutory requirement to “provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services” to its customers.

If you are represented in Congress by any Republicans, you might tell them to immediately approve the $25 billion legislation to fund the Postal Service that their president, one of the worst people in the world, opposes. 

The Latest in the Post Office Scandal

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We’re in the middle of a pandemic that the president has made incredibly worse. That means unprecedented numbers of voters will mail their ballots this year. Yet the president opposes giving the Postal Service the money it needs, even though he admits that a lack of funds will interfere with ballots being properly delivered.

CNN reports:

The internal watchdog at the United States Postal Service is reviewing controversial policy changes recently imposed under Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, and is also examining DeJoy’s compliance with federal ethics rules, according to a spokeswoman for the USPS inspector general and an aide to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who requested the review.

Lawmakers from both parties and postal union leaders have sounded alarms over disruptive changes instituted by DeJoy this summer, including eliminating overtime and slowing some mail delivery. Democrats claim he is intentionally undermining postal service operations to sabotage mail-in voting in the November election — a charge he denies.

Agapi Doulaveris, a spokeswoman for the USPS watchdog, told CNN in an email, “We have initiated a body of work to address the concerns raised, but cannot comment on the details.”

Last week, Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, and eight other Democratic lawmakers asked the inspector general to launch an inquiry into DeJoy on a number of fronts, including the nationwide policy changes he’s made since taking over in June, as well as whether DeJoy has “met all ethics requirements”. . . .

It’s unclear if the inspector general has launched a full-scale investigation into possible politicization at USPS by DeJoy, a Txxxx ally and Republican donor, or if it’s just reviewing the matter for Congress.

CNN first reported earlier this week that DeJoy still owns at least a $30 million equity stake in his former company — a USPS contractor — and that he recently bought stock options for Amazon, a USPS competitor [and customer]. These holdings likely create a major conflict of interest, ethics experts told CNN, though DeJoy and USPS maintain that he has complied with all federal requirements. . . .

On Thursday, Warren said on Twitter that DeJoy’s “inexcusable” stock options in Amazon should be investigated by the watchdog after CNN published its report detailing the trades included in DeJoy’s financial disclosures.

The relationship between DeJoy and President Dxxxx Txxxx has come under intense scrutiny, given Txxxx’s repeated attacks against mail-in voting and USPS’ key role in delivering ballots.

News of the watchdog review comes one day after Txxxx brazenly admitted that he opposes much-needed USPS funding because he doesn’t want to see it used for mail-in voting this November. The pandemic has led to record-breaking levels of voting-by-mail, but Txxxx has tried to restrict the method because he claims it is rife with fraud and abuse, claims that CNN has fact-checked multiple times and are largely without merit.

Democrats pounced on Txxxx’s comments. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Democrats were pushing to include $25 billion for USPS in the next stimulus bill because that was what was requested by the bipartisan board of governors who run USPS and were appointed by Txxxx.

Further raising questions about the USPS showdown, the White House said Friday that Txxxx and DeJoy met at the White House last week, even though Txxxx said he “didn’t speak to the postmaster general” . . . a few days after their meeting.

A White House spokesman told CNN that their meeting on August 3 was “congratulatory” to celebrate DeJoy’s confirmation by the USPS board of governors, which occurred in early May. . . .

This week, DeJoy acknowledged to USPS employees that recent procedural changes have had “unintended consequences,” but described them as necessary.

“Unfortunately, this transformative initiative has had unintended consequences that impacted our overall service levels,” DeJoy wrote in a memo sent this week and obtained by CNN. . . .

Earlier this week, CNN reported on newly obtained financial documents showing that DeJoy holds a large equity stake in his former company, XPO Logistics, totaling between $30 million and $75 million. XPO is a contractor for USPS and other US government agencies.

USPS officials signed off on DeJoy’s financial filings and told CNN that he is in compliance with federal ethics rules. But several outside experts who spoke to CNN said they were shocked that ethics officials approved this arrangement, which apparently allows DeJoy to keep his XPO holdings. One expert even said, “this is a classic case for investigation by an inspector general” . . .

Raising further alarms, on the same day in June that DeJoy divested large amounts of Amazon shares, he purchased stock options giving him the right to buy new shares of Amazon at a price much lower than their current market price, according to the financial disclosures. . . .

In a tweet on Thursday, Warren blasted DeJoy, saying his decision to buy Amazon stock options was “inexcusable.” She also said the USPS inspector general “must investigate this corruption.”

Unquote.

Let’s see how long it takes for the president to fire the Postal Service’s inspector general.

In other news, the Postal Service sent a letter to 46 states saying “voters could be disenfranchised by delayed mail-in ballots” and is simultaneously “removing mail sorting machines from facilities around the country without any official explanation or reason given”. 

Not Going Postal

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The president and his stooges are screwing with the post office, apparently because the president doesn’t like the post office, but also because they think it will help him in the election, when more people will vote by mail than ever before.

Since the post office is the federal government’s most popular agency and most voters prefer getting their mail on time, interfering with delivery in August is probably a really stupid “strategy” (in a rational, non-Fox country, it surely would be).

The Democrats want the post office’s inspector general to investigate, but inspector generals are easy to fire. They also want to give the post office a couple billion dollars as part of the next pandemic relief bill, assuming the Republican Senate eventually agrees to do its job.

The result is that some observers are recommending that as many of us as possible vote in person in November (it will be much easier for some of us than others). Or else that we take our ballots to special “drop boxes” available in some states, although it isn’t clear when those ballots will be counted. 

More from Jamelle Bouie of The New York Times:

There’s no mystery about what President Txxxx intends to do if he holds a lead on election night in November [although I don’t think he will]. He’s practically broadcasting it.

First, he’ll claim victory. Then, having spent most of the year denouncing vote-by-mail as corrupt, fraudulent and prone to abuse, he’ll demand that authorities stop counting mail-in and absentee ballots. . . .

He also seems to be counting on having the advantage of mail slowdowns, engineered by the recently installed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy [delays are already occurring around the country and making people mad]. . . .

If Txxxx is leading on election night, in other words, there’s a good chance he’ll try to disrupt and delegitimize the counting process. That way, if Joe Biden pulls ahead in the days (or weeks) after voting ends — if we experience a “blue shift” like the one in 2018, in which the Democratic majority in the House grew as votes came in — the president will have given himself grounds to reject the outcome as “fake news”.

The only way to prevent this scenario, or at least, rob it of the oxygen it needs to burn, is to deliver an election night lead to Biden. This means voting in person. No, not everyone will be able to do that. But if you plan to vote against Txxxx and can take appropriate precautions, then some kind of hand delivery — going to the polls or bringing your mail-in ballot to a “drop box” — will be the best way to protect your vote from the president’s concerted attempt to undermine the election for his benefit.

Txxxx is the underdog in this year’s race for president. . . . [He] is desperate to hold on to power, but he probably can’t win a fair fight. . . .

A key element of Txxxx’s strategy is to undermine the Postal Service’s ability to deliver and collect mail. The president’s postmaster general has removed experienced officials, implemented cuts and raised postage rates for ballots mailed to voters, increasing the cost if states want the post office to prioritize election mail. And Politico reports that Txxxx’s aides and advisers in the White House have been searching for ways to curb mail-in voting through executive action . . .

If vote-by-mail is the safest option in a pandemic, then the point of the White House’s effort is to create a dilemma for voters who place a premium on safety. . . . Consider the partisan split as well. Fifty-four percent of Biden supporters prefer mail-in voting, according to a July poll from ABC News and The Washington Post, while only 17 percent of Txxxx supporters say the same.

If in-person voters are disproportionately pro-Txxxx, and mail-in voters are disproportionately pro-Biden, then you have the ingredients for an election night standoff, where the president claims victory before all the votes have been counted and tries to secure his “win” by keeping mail-in ballots off the table.

There are reforms that could keep the president from taking this tack. To account for postal delays, states can pledge to count ballots postmarked on or before Nov. 3, so that they’re included in the total even if they arrive late [some states require ballots to be delivered, not postmarked, by Election Day]. To speed up the process, states could permit election officials to verify and count mail-in ballots even before [November 3rd]. They could also decline to release results until all polls close and all votes are in. News organizations, similarly, could set expectations for viewers and bring as much transparency as possible to vote counts and other forms of election analysis [yes, in theory, they could].

Nonetheless, there is a chance that the president takes this path regardless of state officials and the media. And there’s every reason to think that some portion of the Republican Party will back him. The Txxxx campaign and the Republican National Committee are already challenging mail-in voting laws and suing to keep states like Nevada and Pennsylvania from enlarging their scope. . . .

The best defense for the president’s political opponents is, if possible, to vote in person. For some, this will mean going to the polls in November, in the middle of flu season, when the spread of Covid-19 may worsen. In most states, however, there are multiple ways to cast or hand in a ballot. Every state offers some form of early or absentee voting, and 33 states — including swing states like Arizona and Wisconsin — allow absentee voting without an excuse. Txxxx supports absentee voting — it’s how his older supporters in Florida vote — and his opponents should take advantage of the fact that those systems won’t be under the same kind of attack. Many vote-by-mail states also offer drop boxes so that voters can deliver ballots directly to the registrar. And if you must mail in your ballot, the best practice would be to post it as early as possible, to account for potential delays. . . .

There you have it. To head off the worst outcomes, Txxxx must go down in a decisive defeat. He’s on that path already. The task for his opponents is to sustain that momentum and work to make his defeat as obvious as possible, as early as possible. The pandemic makes that a risk, but it’s a risk many of us may have to [actually, should] take.