When The Post Office Gets Pulled Into Politics

Trump v. California 26A124 only said that a discussion cannot be stayed; it said nothing about whether the request was legal or not. Basically it said that TALKING about throwing a brick through a window is not illegal. Actually throwing it is. So it was temporarily stayed until there was some attempt to implement it.

Since I don't live in California, I am not up on the local political issues there. Of course, if you don't like the "Democratic dictatorship", you are free to move to a red state with a "Republican dictatorship". There are plenty of choices with low wages, low health numbers and low education numbers. Anyone looking at those lists know that.

Please either move this thread to the General Discussion area or lock it. Any connection to philately was originally tenuous at best, and now is gone entirely.

Dale

Tell us your political beliefs without telling us your political beliefs.

Why does that bother you? No one is forced to read it.

[qTell us your political beliefs without telling us your political beliefs.][/q]

This is the real problem; my positions should not be thought of as "political" at all. Taxes are political, voting rights should not be. If people want to make a clear voter registration that shows only legal voters, why not send a card to register everyone from 17.5 years old on? In every state, all at once. Then we would not have need for discussions such as this one.

Back to the actual proposal and the implementation of this tool and portal, can someone explain the new process and the postal regulations that were changed? I read the FAQ and now I have more questions than it answered. I tried reading the entire rule but could not find a concise summary of what was changing, why it was necessary, and why it was so rushed.

https://about.usps.com/what/governm...lections.pdf
https://www.federalregister.gov/doc...al-elections


Is the following an accurate summary, or what steps are missing?
- State election officials send the USPS a list of registered voters eligible to vote in the next election.
- State election officials mail absentee ballots to a subset of the voters on this list. (Some states may send absentee ballots to all registered voters, some may send only to those who request to vote absentee).
- USPS uses new barcodes on newly designed envelopes to cross reference each ballot with the names on the list they were given earlier, and if the name is not on the list, the ballot is not delivered.

Is that basically it, and if so, then what does this process accomplish? Otherwise, what else does this portal do?

The FAQ does say that the USPS will not use other federal databases or do any checking to verify voter eligibility, but I did not see it assert that no other government or non-government agency would do any such research. Could they?

This argument is exceedingly weak and reflects the Left's frustration with choosing to use a delivery facility that the federal government controls. It's akin to contending that noncitizens need not obey federal speed limits on an interstate highway because they are driving to a state run food bank. Sorry, the federal government controls the interstates.

The president has ample legal authority to control who uses the mails and how. The job of the Post Office always has involved discretion about who is allowed to send mail where. Whether Irish sweepstakes operators or Chicago peddlers of voodoo products of interest to Africans and Caribbeans, the Post Office has a long history of refusing to carry or forward mail to or from different persons.

The states want to permit voting by a means that is cheap and convenient for them while refusing to accept the constraints under which it operates. Nothing is stopping the states from funding an official courier service to pick up ballots from registered in-home voters. Nothing is stopping the states from funding a fleet of vans that move from street corner to street corner at designated hours to receive ballots.

Use the federal system honestly within its constraints, or pay for an alternative. Insisting on no-rules use of the mail will always make the Left look like it wants free reign for noncitizens' or fraudulent ballots to flood the system.

Without responding in any way, shape, or form to the substance of your comment, I'll point out that saying "the Left wants X" or "the Right always does Y" are 1) not constructive; 2) almost always reveal the poster to be of the opposite political persuasion of the side mentioned; and 3) help ensure threads like this quickly get locked.

Let's leave the partisan finger-pointing to another forum, please. All of us.

It's not only not weak, the constitution explicitly states that only congress and the states can pass laws regulating voting. The states have the primary authority, but congress has the final authority. The president does not have any. Try actually reading the constitution sometime instead of pretending that it's a leftist plot.