RFL: Mark Jamison, Trump vs. The USPS & the Importance of Mail-In Voting
Contributor to Save The Post Office and Angry Bear blogs, Mark Jamison was interviewed and featured on Richard French Live, also can be seen on Meet the Press hosted by Chuck Todd, and later CNN. In this RFL YouTube, Mark gives all the reasons why we should be concerned with trump and Louis DeJoy tampering with the USPS and mail-in ballots.
President Trump has been attempting to sow the seeds of doubt before Election Day without evidence of issues resulting from mail-in voting which has been used successfully for absentee voting and other state voting. Suggesting ballot fraud and voting irregularities trump, republicans, and their followers claim it will result in a “rigged” by mail election if mail-in voting is used extensively now.
Meanwhile, we witness an overhaul of the USPS administration taking place with a new trump-politically-selected-PMG and new senior staff being put in place, the removal of additional resource to secure on-time delivery of ballots, mailboxes being removed from service in some states which use mail-in voting, OT being cut at the USPS office, etc. all done within ninety days of a national election. One has to wonder who is rigging the election and taking action to deter citizens from voting in a safe manner during a pandemic and making their vote count.
Former USPS Postmaster Mark Jamison discusses how and why Trump is attempting to destroy the Postal Service.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=uaND
January 4, 2020
Federal Government Post Office Employment, 2020
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=ueO6
January 4, 2020
Federal Government Post Office Employment, 2020
(Indexed to 2020)
Notice the Post Office employment has decreased by 8.9% this year through July.
Good grief, I am a dope, the decrease is a mere 0.89% which is of no account.
anne:
No dope, just an honest mistake. I can erase if you like.
What I did was to graph employment in the Post Office and in transportation and warehousing on the same chart and look at the wrong employment decline, then fail to think about the supposed result.
Here is the graph I created, then misread:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=tYdX
January 15, 2020
Transportation & Warehousing and Post Office Employment, 2020
Beginning again:
Why was there a decrease in Post Office employment in July? The decrease was 0.89%, which seems small, but at a time when the Post Office is straining what explains any decrease at all?
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=ueO6
January 4, 2020
Federal Government Post Office Employment, 2020
(Indexed to 2020)
What stands out to me is that there is not much of a case that the changes in the USPS will benefit Trump in the fall election. Is there any reason to think that late arriving mail-in ballots would specifically hurt Trump’s chances? Are people seriously trying to say that such ballots should be thought to favor Biden in some manner that in-person and timely delivered mailed ballots might not? I just listened to the New Jersey governor saying they will mail ballots to everyone without soliciting such a ballot. Then if you vote in-person your ballot will be provisional because election officials won’t know if you already voted. Honestly, I would expect very serious confrontations in Wisconsin if anything like this were to happen. People vote in-person to be certain their vote gets registered and if the poll workers cannot guarantee that it will be it is going to be really bad.
Trump’s Drive to Undermine Confidence in the Election Is Accelerating
President Trump stepped up his attacks on mail-in voting, making false claims that helping people vote by mail during the pandemic would lead to voter fraud.
Pressure continued to grow for the postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, a Republican megadonor and ally of the president, to resign.
As Democrats prepare for the convention, Trump sows election fears with false claims about mail-in voting
NY Times – August 16
With Joe Biden leading in many public polls, and Democrats getting ready to kick off their national convention on Monday, President Trump’s drive to create confusion and undermine confidence in the election is accelerating, as he attacks mail-in voting and praises his postmaster general despite criticism over mail service and an investigation opened by the Postal Service’s inspector general.
In an appearance on CNN on Sunday, Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, defended the president’s opposition to universal mail-in ballots, which Mr. Trump has called “the mail-in scam,” making charges without evidence that efforts by states to help people vote by mail in the pandemic would lead to widespread voter fraud — a claim that even some Republicans dispute. Mr. Trump has said that higher voter participation would hurt Republican candidates.
When CNN host Jake Tapper pushed back, saying, “there’s no evidence of widespread voter fraud,” Mr. Meadows said, “there’s no evidence that there’s not, either.”
Responding to reports that several mail-sorting machines had been removed, among several recent moves by the Postal Service that have caused mail delays, Mr. Meadows claimed that no mail-sorting machines would be taken off line before Election Day and insisted that the notion that they would be was a false “political narrative by my Democrat colleagues.”
In an interview with CBS News on Sunday morning, Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a senior adviser, also claimed that a universal mail-in system would be prone to errors and possible fraud.
“I have a friend in New Jersey who just got married, and she got sent two ballots, one in her old name and one in her new name,” he said. “If you have a tried and true system, where there are some security mechanisms built-in, that’s acceptable. But you can’t have a new system and expect Americans to have confidence in the election.” …
House Democrats summon postal leaders to hearing on mail delays
AP via @BostonGlobe – August 16
BEDMINSTER, N.J. — The Democratic-run House on Sunday demanded that leaders of the U.S. Postal Service testify at an emergency oversight hearing Aug. 24 on mail delays as concerns grow that the Trump White House is trying to undermine the agency during the coronavirus pandemic while states expand mail-in voting options for the November presidential election.
Pressure is increasing on DeJoy, a major Republican donor and ally of the president, who has said he is modernizing the money-losing agency to make it more efficient. DeJoy has made cuts in overtime for postal workers, imposed restrictions on transportation and reduced of the quantity and use of mail-processing equipment.
“The postmaster general and top Postal Service leadership must answer to the Congress and the American people as to why they are pushing these dangerous new policies that threaten to silence the voices of millions, just months before the election,” congressional Democrats said in a statement announcing the hearing. The lawmakers included House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney, the committee chair, along with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Trump had said on Trump that he was blocking a $25 billion emergency injection sought by the Postal Service, as well as a Democratic proposal to provide $3.6 billion in additional election money to the states. The Republican president worries that mail-in voting could cost him reelection. The money for the post office is intended yo help with processing an expected surge of mail-in ballots. Both funding requests have been tied up in congressional negotiations over a new coronavirus relief package.
On Saturday, Trump tried to massage his message, saying he supports increasing money for the Postal Service. He said he was refusing to capitulate to Democrats on other parts of the relief package, including funding for states weighed down by debt accumulated before the pandemic.
Eric,
You really need to keep up with the world.
“The ‘Blue Shift’ Will Decide the Election
Something fundamental has changed about the ways Americans vote.
As polling places closed on November 6, 2018, the expected “blue wave” looked more like a ripple. Not only had some of the highest-profile Democratic candidates lost, but the party’s gains in the House and the Senate looked smaller than anticipated.
The wave, it turned out, simply hadn’t crested yet. Over the ensuing weeks, as more ballots were counted, Democrats kept winning races—eventually netting 41 House seats. In Arizona, the Republican Martha McSally conceded the Senate race to the Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, who picked up more than 70,000 votes in post–Election Day counting. Democrats narrowed deficits in races in Florida and Georgia too. Republicans were stunned….
This sort of late-breaking Democratic vote is the new, though still underappreciated, normal in national elections. Americans have become accustomed to knowing who won our elections promptly, but there are many legitimate votes that are not counted immediately every election year. For reasons that are not totally understood by election observers, these votes tend to be heavily Democratic, leading results to tilt toward Democrats as more of them are counted, in what has become known as the “blue shift.” In most cases, the blue shift is relatively inconsequential, changing final vote counts but not results. But in others, as in 2018, it can materially change the outcome.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/brace-blue-shift/615097/
Read that article also.