6 comments

  • hackyhacky 1 hour ago
    > Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

    Yes. That's the point. The administration doesn't care about fixing whatever hypothetical mail ballot fraud may or may not exist; they are doing this to inject chaos into the election results, giving them cover to claim any result they want or even to just throw out the results entirely. Catastrophic problems are the means to that end.

    • RickJWagner 33 minutes ago
      [flagged]
      • Geeek 28 minutes ago
        One can observe and accuse based on that observation. What 'sources' do you expect to see?
      • NegativeLatency 23 minutes ago
        They’d said as much explicitly and implicitly with their actions.
      • MithrilTuxedo 17 minutes ago
        The fact that reputable sources were not provided to justify the need for fixes has been reputable source enough.

        Bullshit is produced for the effect saying it will have.

      • toomuchtodo 24 minutes ago
        You mean where the sitting president said they were going to try to rig the midterms?

        > Provide reputable sources, we can discuss it.

        His Truth Social account is public. Do we agree that is a reputable source?

        https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/trum...

      • mcmcmc 14 minutes ago
        Project 2025
  • nedo_var 50 minutes ago
    [dead]
  • ck2 1 day ago
    good thing it's completely illegal for the federal government to interfere with state voting proceedure

    > For instance, the Postal Service has what the whistleblower claims is a "zero percent failure rate."

    > Mail workers would scan a sample of a batch of mail ballots — about 400 out of a batch of 10,000 or more — to verify it matches what is in the federal mail ballot portal.

    > Under the policy, if even one barcode on a single ballot in the batch doesn't scan properly or the information does not match, the entire batch would be rejected and returned to state election officials so the problem ballot could be addressed, and then the verification process would have to be started again.

    • mafuy 1 hour ago
      This is not the job of the postal service, but of the government. There is zero reason to outsource verification, and the postal service ought to vehemently reject this attempt to shift responsibility. Though I guess they won't, seeing as they are gleichgeschaltet.
      • mcmcmc 13 minutes ago
        You realize USPS is the government right? It’s literally in the Constitution
    • BigTTYGothGF 27 minutes ago
      > good thing it's completely illegal for the federal government to interfere with state voting proceedure

      Oh yeah that'll stop them.

    • grim_io 53 minutes ago
      Assuming they check 400 out of 10k, and assuming someone would want to cause any meaningful discrepancies >= 1% of the ballots, meaning 100 problematic ballots per 10k batch.

      This system would catch it 98,3% of the time. Pretty good, I'd say.

      • tenuousemphasis 8 minutes ago
        Ok now what's the potential false positive rate?
    • Jordan-117 45 minutes ago
      They don't care if it's illegal. They'll do it anyway and trust in the tainted result being a fait accompli that the courts can't (or won't) resolve.
    • gWPVhyxPHqvk 40 minutes ago
      It's still funny thinking that there's people out there in 2026 who think that "it's illegal" will stop the Trump administration.
    • downrightmike 1 day ago
      That sample is wrong for statistics, 4% is literally not significant. It's also too much for sample controls
      • daveguy 1 hour ago
        No one ever accused this administration of being competent.
        • emeril 1 hour ago
          maybe so, but it is very vocal about they are the most modest
  • SoftTalker 48 minutes ago
    > One third of all Americans cast their ballots by mail

    Sounds like BS. Or if it isn't, it's alarming.

    Most voting should be in person, on election day. Absentee ballots for those who cannot do that, as we have done for decades. Early voting, unchecked mail-in voting, are all additional avenues for fraud or simply problems such as lost or damaged ballots or delayed processing.

    • someothherguyy 2 minutes ago
    • torben-friis 32 minutes ago
      I'm not American, but if I'm not mistaken, you don't have election day off like in other countries, right?

      If so, how is that not clearly discriminatory for those who can't afford the time to go.

      • gortok 23 minutes ago
        No, Election Day is not a paid holiday, or even a recognized holiday. Public schools are generally out (at least the ones used as voting precints) but folks have work, and typically most "in person" votes are cast after 5pm (after folks traditionally leave work).

        Mail in voting has been something that the elderly, infirmed, workers, and folks in the military have done for decades. It's remarkably secure and quite auditable. The issue the right has with it is that the folks that vote by mail (the military notwithstanding) are typically democrats.

        • mcmcmc 10 minutes ago
          [delayed]
      • fhdkweig 23 minutes ago
        It is not a paid holiday. It isn't an unpaid holiday either. And if you work a minimum wage job, you probably need to work as many hours as you can. And if you don't show up to work on Tuesday, don't bother showing up on Wednesday because you don't have that job anymore.

        This is absolutely discriminatory against the poor. That's why the republicans fight for these types of restrictions and democrats fight against them.

      • Arubis 27 minutes ago
        We have a designated Election Day. It is (as you correctly imply) not a federal holiday. My own perspective is that that is indeed clearly discriminatory, and that some people like it that way.
      • NDlurker 22 minutes ago
        Everywhere I've lived has early voting too. I usually vote a few days before election day because it's not so busy.
    • ZekeSulastin 12 minutes ago
      The entire state of Oregon has done vote-by-mail for the past ~30 years and it seems to have gone fine for them for decades. Then again, their voting by mail wasn't being challenged by an actively hostile Federal government for much of that time.
    • maximilianburke 10 minutes ago
      How much fraud happens because of mail-in or early voting?
    • wpm 23 minutes ago
      How much fraud is proven to be occurring due to mail-in ballots?
    • mchristen 27 minutes ago
      Then voting needs to be a national holiday with plenty of polling locations.
      • fhdkweig 7 minutes ago
        While I think that making it a national holiday would be a good idea because it would maximize the number of eligible voters, it would still disenfranchise some people. There are jobs that have to be done 24/7/365 (mostly safety jobs), therefor there will be someone who is stuck at work that day. There are people who work at power companies on Christmas Day just to make sure the lights on Christmas trees light up.

        I think the best approach is what Georgia has done. No-excuse mail-in for those who want that. And 3 weeks of early voting including Saturdays. And for those who just enjoy standing in lines, there is the official Election Day. If a redneck state can get it done without issues, then we all can do it.

    • 1shooner 28 minutes ago
      Perhaps every state should just have one very well-monitored polling place.
    • wat10000 10 minutes ago
      That's just fear mongering. Absentee voting by mail has been a thing for centuries. Attempting to limit it to people who are unable to vote in person doesn't do anything to make it more secure, and is a very weak control. It's not like they're going to check up on every single person who claims to have a specific reason they can't get to the polls. Beyond that, no-excuse absentee ballots have been a thing in many states for decades. Three states have been mailing absentee ballots to every voter automatically for a decade or more. Despite this long history, there is no evidence of widespread fraud or other problems resulting from it.
      • fhdkweig 3 minutes ago
        Agreed. I can't even recall any point in my life when an allegation of fraud was made before Trump came on the scene. I've seen requests for recounts when the margins were close, but never an allegation of malicious intent.
  • thataccount 25 minutes ago
    So these rules by the Federal government were implemented to stop mail in voting from being abused as it has been for some time. The US Postal Inspections Service was being heavily abused by the government in times past in ways that were blatantly illegal. Hardly a peep was had about that, but everyone being up in arms about this tells me that the same people who were abusing the US Postal Inspections Service are probably upset that they won't be able to abuse mail in ballots the same way as they were that service.
    • wat10000 9 minutes ago
      Your vague handwavey manner of writing sounds very presidential.
      • thataccount 7 minutes ago
        It's actually very specific. Look up the previous abuses of the US Postal Inspections Bureau and you will see exactly what I mean and why I've said it the way I've said it.
  • MithrilTuxedo 7 minutes ago
    What business is it of the USPS except to transmit all mail regardless of purpose?

    The fact that the USPS would notice elections were being conducted is perverse.