My older brother and I are thirteen months apart. His favorite pastime when we were young was pushing my buttons; I always reacted exactly the way he wanted me to. I cannot count the number of times my mom told me, "If you will stop reacting the way he wants you to, it won't be fun any more and he'll stop doing it." I never could make myself stop reacting and thankfully, we both grew up. Watching the Democrats react to Trump would be hysterically funny if it weren't so blooming dangerous to the future of our country. Trump plays the mainstream media/"moderates"/Democrats/Never-Trumpers like a Stradivarius and they always give him the satisfying hissy fit he wants. Case in point, the postal service and mail-in ballots.
Let's talk about the Postal Service and then we'll talk about voting by mail.
A) The Postal Service has been losing money like a sieve for decades. Because they are a government-run entity, not a private entity, they lose money without consequence. The taxpayers have been bailing them out year after year to the point of ridiculousness. This is a problem. This is not a new problem. But now that the Democrats can use it an election stick to beat the American public with, it's THE. MOST. IMPORTANT. ISSUE. ON. THE. PLANET. (https://www.foxnews.com/politics/postal-service-peril-congress-watchdog)
B) Democrats are trashing recently confirmed (June 15. 2020) Postmaster General Louis DeJoy as a partisan hack and Trump hatchet man, chosen deliberately to hamper any votes by mail in the election. Of course, never in the history of our country has anyone been appointed to any seat in the government because of their political ties to the President. (Seriously heavy sarcasm here.) But in this case, DeJoy was chosen by the USPS Board of Governors, by unanimous vote. "The President...does not control the operations of the Postal Service nor does he select or appoint the Postmaster General. The Board of Governors does both of these things...The governors are appointed by a president and confirmed by the United States Senate. No more than five of the nine governors may be from the same political party." (https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/trump-vs-dems-on-mail-in-voting-jason-chaffetz. This entire article is an interesting read; I learned much about the workings of the USPS.) Never mind that DeJoy spent 35 years of his life in the business of logistics and is trying to get the Postal Service to operate more like a business, be accountable to the shareholders (i.e. taxpayers) and get into the 21st Century. There may have been some political influence in him being chosen, but those are the spoils of winning the Presidency. Heaven knows Republicans suffered through their fair share of Democrat appointees during Obama's presidency.
C) The USPS was in a shambles before this week when Democrats discovered this could be a political sledgehammer to get their way on a THREE+ TRILLION DOLLAR "stimulus" bill riddled with pork and leftist agenda. The Wall Street Journal details just a few of their problems here: https://www.foxnews.com/media/wsj-usps-blockbuster-in-a-netflix-world. The list is long, I suggest you read the article. And since Trump did an end-run around their stalemate with the Senate, by issuing several executive orders, they freaked out and have made this the crisis du jour. Trump is using this as his bargaining chip to bring the Democrats back to the table.
D) I like many of the things Trump has enacted as President, but his inelegance in speech is flat-out painful sometimes. However, the main stream media's willingness to mischaracterize, misrepresent and misreport on the President is embarrassing and disgusting. Here is what the President acutally said: "...negotiations over the fourth economic stimulus relief package were held up, in part, due to Democrats' demands for billions of dollars in funding toward mail-in voting. "It's their fault," Trump said. "They want $3.5 billion for something that's fraudulent ... for the mail-in votes, universal mail-in ballots. They want $25 billion for the post office. They need that money so it can work and they can take these millions and millions of ballots."Trump added: "But if they don't get those two items, then they can't have mail-in ballots." (https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-democrats-mail-in-voting-money-coronavirus-stimulus-package) But the MSM headlines shout, "Trump is Slowing Down the Post Office!" MSN, "Mail Delays Fuel Concern Trump is Undeructting Postal Service!" NY Times, "Trump Admits he is Undermining USPS to Make it Harder to Vote!" The Guardian. (This one from the Guardian is a straight-faced lie.) Trump has not adequately made his case about the real dangers of all mail-in voting, so I will make it for him. (See below). But he is a negotiator, that is what he does. So he will happily get down in the mud with the Democrats who have turned every governmental effort into a brass-knuckled brawl.
E) Yet again, I never cease to be amazed at the ignorance of the general public as to the workings of our Republic. We don't actually have a national election. We have a whole bunch of local elections which votes we tally and keep sending up the chain until we count the votes and know who's been elected. Election rules vary from state to state and quite often from party to party within each state. Some states already have all mail-in voting. Washington is one of them. They already have established rules on ballot deadlines, voter verification, etc. Most states do not. Currently, only five states do all mail-in voting. With an infrastructure already in place, those states can continue as before. But with approximately two and a half months until the election, the assumption that forty-five other states can magically be prepared to have all mail-in ballots properly set up is laughable. Mail-in balloting is not immune to fraud even in established states. One way around potential problems with mail service is that we have secure drop-boxes throughout each county where ballots are only ever touched by election workers. That cannot prevent tampering either, but it does eliminate a level of potential mishandling or even malfeasance. It is not even feasable to think the other forty-five states would be able to come up with drop boxes in that time frame--maybe a private entity could, but a government? during Covid? with no budget? Highly unlikely.
F) Democrat pols who are screaming for all mail-in ballots are making it sound like our Republic will collapse immediately into dust if they do not get their way. I am not opposed to mail-in balloting. It can work. What I am adamantly opposed to is broadcast mailing ballots willy-nilly to every home in the country and then while watching unicorns and rainbows appear out of nowhere wait for every ballot to come back in an honest and correct way. Surely there is no possibility that anyone would ever think of stealing someone's ballot from their mailbox and filling it out for them. Nor could there ever be the prospect of more than one ballot being sent to an address. Not a single illegal immigrant would ever consider voting, even when that is a right reserved for citizens. Please don't even bother telling me that would never happen. I don't know how much; but it's not worth the risk to me. And I guarantee you that if the shoe were on the other foot the Democrats would be screeching "foul" from sea to shining sea. (For more information please see the following: https://nypost.com/2020/08/04/forget-voter-fraud-the-mail-in-process-itself-is-the-biggest-worry/, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/07/new-york-election-failure-mail-in-voting/614446/, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/21/heres-problem-with-mail-in-ballots-they-might-not-be-counted/, https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/04/24/28_million_mail-in_ballots_went_missing_in_last_four_elections_143033.html)
G) If someone does not feel safe voting in person this fall, they may request an absentee ballot through established and secure procedures. If local counties do not feel that they can establish safe polling places for the election then they bloody well better get to work and get things changed legally and properly between now and election day. This cannot be done at the last minute and be remotely close to legitimate. Do any of us want to relive the Bush v. Gore election that was strung out for weeks waiting for a decision?!
H) The demi-god Dr. Fauci has stated: "...there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to vote in person..." as long as we follow his vaunted mask and distancing recommendations. The call for all mail-in ballots is totally unnnecessary. If you can go to Costco or Walmart, you can sure as heck go vote.
I) In all seriousness, voting is one of the most sacred duties we have as citizens. I want that right to be protected for every eligible voter. We must guard zealously the need to have one vote per citizen and protect that for every one of us. It is the most important way that we each can have a say in our governance and a right to complain. Fiddling around with the way we vote at the last minute is going to be a recipe for disaster and open up this Presidential election for endless accusations of corruption and tinkering on all sides. This cannot be a political fight, it must be a fight to preserve what is right. Broadcast ballot-mailing with outdated and incorrect voter lists is just plain wrong.
A couple of other interesting articles: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mail-in-voting-faces-slew-of-issues-nationwide, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/postmaster-general-vows-we-are-not-slowing-down-voting-by-mail
I know it is a little late, but I appreciate the research you have done about the Postal Service. Thank you so much for your clear explanations. Naturally, I have surmised that the Democratic party thinking that Trump would steal letters from people's mailboxes is pretty wild. I do feel sorry for the new Postmaster General to be subjected to such undeserved and irrational criticism.
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