Americans Are Already Voting In Two Dozen States-- Many Have No Need To Hear Debates

 

Tomorrow, early early voting ballots are mailed to people who requested them in Missouri. And on Thursday, they'll be mailed out in Illinois, Maryland, Mississippi and North Dakota. (On Thursday, Illinois voters can also vote in person.) Voters are already casting ballots in 23 states! Ballots have already been mailed out in North Carolina, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Minnesota, South Dakota, West Virginia, Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and Wyoming. And early in-person voting has begun in Minnesota, South Dakota, Virginia, Wyoming, Michigan, New Jersey and Vermont.

Millions of Americans have already made up their minds are aren't waiting to watch or listen to the debates before voting. According to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released yesterday, The Donald's disapproval number is 53% (45% approve). Asked who they would vote for today, 51% said Biden and 43% said The Donald. and when asked who they would vote for for Congress, 42% of registered voters said Democrats and 39% said Republicans.

As of Friday, 7% said they had already voted-- 4% by mail and 3% in person-- and 45% said they plan to vote early (27% by mail and 18% in person). Just 42% of respondents said they plan to wait until Nov. 3 to vote.

It's worth mentioning that another poll released yesterday, Ipsos' for ABC News, found that 69% don't have confidence in The Donald vouching for a coronavirus vaccine, including 16% saying "not so much" and 53% saying "none at all." This question alone-- something that has never come up in an American election before-- could determine who wins the presidency.

Over the weekend, CNN reported (above) that people stood on line for hours to vote. A local electionofficial in Faifax County Virginia told CNN that in 20 years they had never seen this many people show up on the first day. As far as the The Donald's and the GOP's decision to fight the election by intimidating voters... if has begun. Business Insider reported that supporters of The Donald staged a rally during early voting in Fairfax County on Saturday, "in a stunt that an election official said had intimidated voters and disrupted voting. It was only the second day of early voting and the Trumpist neo-fascists were blocking the entrance to the polling place. Some voters, and elections staff, felt intimidated by the crowd and were provided escorts past the Trumpists. Imagine what would have happened if they were black.

The Donald had called on his fascist-oriented supporters to act as "poll watchers" to guard against election fraud.

Already some observers say that the escalating tensions could spill over into election day violence.

Russ Travers, who served as acting director of the National Counter-Terrorism Centre until March, told ABC News last week: "I fear there are a lot of people out there with very warped views of reality and a lot of guns who could willingly take up their weapons in defense of what they believe is the President and the constitution.

"That, I think, is a worrisome possibility that is growing as the political rhetoric gets more and more severe."

In a statement Saturday, Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney Steve Descano said that those seeking to intimidate voters would be prosecuted.

Is Gary Farmer's Abject Fear Of Winning Going To Cost Biden The State Of Florida?

 

Florida is the ultimate 50-50 swing state. After FDR died-- and Florida had given him over 70% of its votes in each of his 4 runs-- Florida became a purple state. Truman won and then Eisenhower won there twice. After that, it went like this:

• 1960- Nixon 51.51% to JFK 48.49%
• 1964- LBJ 51.15% to Goldwater 48.85%
• 1968- Nixon 40.53% to Humphrey 30.93% to Wallace 28.53%
• 1972- Nixon 71.91% to McGovern 27.80%
• 1976- Carter 51.93% to Ford 46.64%
• 1980- Reagan 55.52% to Carter 38.50%
• 1984- Reagan 65.32 to Mondale 34.66%
• 1988- Bush I 60.87% to Dukakis 38.51%
• 1992- Bush I 40.89% to Clinton 39.00% to Perot 19.82%
• 1996- Clinton 48.02% to Dole 42.32% to Perot 9.12%
• 2000- Bush II 48.85% to Gore 48.84%
• 2004- Bush II 52.10% to Kerry 47.09%
• 2008- Obama 51.03% to McCain 48.22%
• 2012- Obama 50.01% to Romney 49.13%
• 2016- Trump 48.60% to Clinton 47.41%

Very few votes-- just a handful anywhere in the state-- can tip a statewide election, and often does. And there are 29 electoral votes at stake-- same as New York and more than any other states other than Texas (38) and California (55). Trump can't win a second term without and it's such a major target for Biden because of that more than because he needs it himself. In Politico yesterday, Matt Dixon noted that Florida Democrats have built a vote-by-mail lead. But there is more than that at stake: control of the state legislature and at least 3 or 4 congressional seats. Dixon pointed out that Florida Democrats "have requested roughly 730,000 more election ballots ahead of the general election than Republicans, who have seen their traditional vote-by-mail dominance eroded by the president’s efforts to brand it as a vehicle for widespread fraud."

As of Thursday morning, Democrats in the nation’s largest swing state had requested 2.3 million mail ballots, compared with 1.5 million requests from registered Republican voters. That’s a departure from four years ago, when a million Republicans requested ballots compared to fewer than 882,000 Democrats.

It’s a good-- but not conclusive-- early sign for Democrats less than six weeks from Election Day in a state where every vote counts. Trump and Democrat Joe Biden are all but deadlocked in the state, where Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by just 166,911 votes.

...[But a] request for a mail ballot does not equate to a ballot cast.

During Florida primaries last month, Democrats failed to return nearly 800,000 mail ballots. Republicans, by contrast, had fewer than 562,300 requested ballots unaccounted for. Florida voters in all mailed 4.2 million ballots in the primary.

...Florida Republicans also tend to turn out in much larger numbers on Election Day, which can swamp Democrats’ mailed ballots and early in-person voting advantages. During the August primary, 576,875 Republicans voted on Election Day, compared with 325,961 Democrats, an advantage that the GOP expects to maintain in November.

...Trump this year has made mailed-ballots a partisan bogeyman with baseless accusations that have hurt his own chances in the battleground state. While on a tirade about remote voting, Trump appeared to encourage North Carolina residents to illegally cast two ballots-- by mail and in person-- prompting a fresh spate of worries among his allies. But Republicans close to the president so far have been unable to persuade him to stop equating vote by mail to fraud.

The persistent attacks already have hurt Republican voter turnout in Florida, where the party long has had an edge in vote by mail. During the August primaries, 1.9 million people cast ballots by mail. Of those, nearly 60 percent were Democrats, a shift from past performance.

In the 2016 primary, for instance, of the 1.1 million vote-by-mail ballots cast, 57 percent came from Republicans.

“Republican numbers are tanking for sure, due almost exclusively to Trump’s false claims of rampant fraud,” said incoming state Senate Leader Gary Farmer, a Fort Lauderdale Democrat running his caucus’ 2020 campaigns. “Historically, the Republicans have kicked our butts with vote by mail. Not this year.”

Republicans may lose the state because of Trump... Democrats may lose because of Farmer, whose ambition is to be Senate Minority leader. The Florida state Senate consists of 40 members. Right now, 23 are Republicans and 17 are Democrats. If the Republicans lose 4 seats (net), the Democrats get a say in state government. Farmer is so panicked about the idea of a Democratic majority that he has worked-- not something he is known to do much-- to sabotage Democratic candidates running for the Senate! Joan Walsh, reporting for The Nation last week, told the story elegantly yesterday of how Farmer has undermined Kathy Lewis' campaign. Just as bad, Farmer demanded that progressive Democrat Rachel Brown drop out of her race and cede her district to the GOP without a fight, a move that could cause Biden to lose enough votes to lose the state and perhaps the presidency. That's who Gary Farmer is-- the worst of the Democratic Party anywhere.

The Rachel Brown story is an interesting one. Farmer was eager to see his girlfriend, Heather Fitzenhagen, a Republican state Rep, win the Lee County-based Senate seat (Fort Myers, Cape Coral, Sanibel). GOP incumbent Lizbeth Benacquisto is termed-out of office and Fitzenhagen is a vaguely mainstream Republican compared to another state House member, neo-fascist Ray Rodrigues, who was also running for the Republican nomination. Farmer demanded-- on several bullying phone calls-- that Brown drop out, insisting that somehow that would help his lover. Brown demurred and is now the Democratic nominee-- who Farmer-- in control of all institutional state Senate campaign funds-- adamantly refuses to back. The Trumpist neo-fascist Rodrigues slaughtered Farmer's girlfriend in the GOP primary, 47,935 (74.8%) to 16,115 (25.2%).

A couple of days ago, Brown told me that "Compromise is something I am familiar with. My university (Florida Gulf Coast University) has sanctions on the percentage of university owned land they can develop on, so every year they buy more land so they can build on more of it and still remain in the required percentage agreement. This is exactly what we are doing when we bend the knee to people who don't think healthcare, clean air and clean water should be a basic human right. When we accept compromise, we lose land we will never regain. Farmer and friends handed the nomination to a Republican who, like Gary Farmer, voted against allowing folks to purchase prescription drugs at lower prices from Canada. They saw Heather having a heart once because she voted against parental consent for abortions because "in many cases the parent is the cause of the pregnancy" (Heather's words). She has a level of personhood but under pressure from her party she will always vote against the needs of working people." She continued, bending over backwards to be "fair" to Farmer. Please read her whole statement and consider contributing to her campaign by clicking on the 2020 Florida thermometer below.

It can be easy to feel defeated, which is why I sympathized with Gary when he called. He sounded scared. The Republicans are the party of the rich, and to win an election you need to buy ads. The person with the most money usually wins because they can buy the most ads. I'm sure Gary has lost plenty of times, and he is forced into a rigid way of thinking... how can I do my job... who can I get in who can help me do my job... So he starts to empathize with the enemy and graciously accept any crumb they give him.

I am on the outside and I see the big picture. If we leave vacant seats uncontested across Florida, we are handing over democracy to the Republicans in exchange for 40 lashes instead of 41. We have to fight because our entire nation depends on the way Florida votes this year. Yes, I have a personal fear of Ray Rodriguez winning and destroying Florida but the heart of the matter is what the public knows. If the public knows that an awful man is in control, and they don't like him and they revolt, great. If the public thinks everything is fine when in reality it is not, well that's even more dangerous.

Also, when you don't support a candidate financially you are sending them into battle with nothing. Yes I can get creative, but I'm going to need at least $20,000 to reach all the voters I need to reach and that's still incredibly low for a Senate race.

The fact that Gary at this point cannot work with Heather to join me, the way he joined her to take me down is pretty nasty. I offered a hand of unity to Heather when she lost. I asked her to join me in my fight against Ray. Surely she cares about beating him a little bit (even though she never showed up to forums with the two of us, I cannot imagine she gave up her congressional race to go after the party's chosen future governor for nothing) I thought surely a good political move for her even would be to join a young emerging female in politics, but no. She and Gary and the rest of the state Senate Dems chose to shun me like an Amish community. I have never felt more unwelcome. I, someone who is putting my life on hold to save Florida from a tyrant... the Trump of the Florida Senate.

Vote By Mail Tirades Are Starting To Bite Trump-- And Down-Ballot Republicans-- In The Ass

With Trump forces-- whether in the U.S. or Russia-- having prepared to steal the election by hacking voting machines in a few pivotal counties, news of heavily-promoted absentee voting, which has always been friendlier to Republicans than Democrats, sent Trump into a months-long rage. And all his carrying on against vote-by-mail, even though he and his family normally vote by mail themselves, many of his most devoted followers have decided to not vote by mail.

One of the first indications of what that was going to mean to Republicans-- not just Trump-- came back in early April when Wisconsin Democrat Jill Karofsky, who was endorsed by Bernie, ousted far right sociopath Daniel Kelly, who had been endorsed by Trump (a virtual kiss-of-death) from his seat on the state Supreme Court. She didn't just scrape by either. The final vote in this "50/50 state" that Trump won in 2016 was 855,573 (55.2%) to 693,134 (44.7%).

Absentee voting hit a record high that day. Of 1.5 million votes cast, 1.1 million were by mail. NPR reported that "[A]t least 71% of votes cast last Tuesday were absentee. In the 2016 general election in Wisconsin, and in 2018's midterms, fewer than 30% of votes were cast absentee. And in 2014, fewer than 20% were." How does 1.1 million absentee ballots compare with absentee voting in past spring elections?

• 2019- 89,218
• 2018- 129,811
• 2017- 103,373
• 2016- 247,052
• 2015- 102,723

In other words, almost double the number of people voted absentee in 2020 than in the previous 5 years combined! And with many Republicans following Trump's anti-vote-by-mail rants, Karofsky ran up a huge margin. Normally, Supreme Court elections in Wisconsin are extremely close and less than a percentage point divides winners and losers.

Yesterday, reporting for Politico Alex Isenstadt shows how Trump is being hoist on his own petard now. "Democrats are amassing an enormous lead in early voting," he wrote, "alarming Republicans who worry they’ll need to orchestrate a huge Election Day turnout during a deadly coronavirus outbreak to answer the surge. The Democratic dominance spreads across an array of battleground states, according to absentee ballot request data compiled by state election authorities and analyzed by Democratic and Republican data experts. In North Carolina and Pennsylvania, Democrats have a roughly three-to-one advantage over Republicans in absentee ballot requests. In Florida-- a must-win for President Donald Trump-- the Democratic lead stands at more than 700,000 ballot requests, while the party also leads in New Hampshire, Ohio and Iowa."

Even more concerning for Republicans, Democrats who didn't vote in 2016 are requesting 2020 ballots at higher rates than their GOP counterparts. The most striking example is Pennsylvania, where nearly 175,000 Democrats who sat out the last race have requested ballots, more than double the number of Republicans, according to an analysis of voter rolls by the Democratic firm TargetSmart.

Though the figures are preliminary, they provide a window into Democratic enthusiasm ahead of the election and offer a warning for Republicans. While Democrats stockpile votes and bring in new supporters, Trump’s campaign is relying on a smooth Election Day turnout operation at a time when it’s confronting an out-of-control pandemic and a mounting cash crunch.

“A ballot in is a ballot in, and no late-campaign message or event takes it out of the count,” said Chris Wilson, a GOP pollster who specializes in data and analytics. “Bottom line is that means that Biden is banking a lead in the mail and more of the risk of something going wrong late is born by Republicans because our voters haven't voted yet.”

...[T]he data also shows that Democrats are attracting new supporters in small but potentially significant numbers in states they narrowly lost in 2016.

In Pennsylvania, which Trump won by just 44,000 votes four years ago, Democrats have built a lead of nearly 100,000 ballot requests from voters who didn’t participate in the 2016 election but are preparing to vote by mail this year, according to TargetSmart’s figures. In Michigan, where Trump won by fewer than 11,000 votes (and where voters do not register by party), the firm’s model shows that Democratic-aligned voters have a nearly 20,000-person advantage among non-2016 voters signing up to receive ballots. In Wisconsin, which Trump won by 22,000 votes, Democratic-leaning voters who skipped 2016 have made nearly 10,000 more requests for this election than their GOP counterparts.

Republicans are also encouraging supporters to vote absentee. Through telephone calls, digital advertising and mailers, they have prodded Trump backers to vote early or by mail. The pro-Trump outside group America First Action, meanwhile, has been following up with voters to ensure they are turning in their ballots.

Yet Trump-- much to the frustration of senior Republicans-- has undermined those efforts with repeated attacks on mail-in voting. The president has used his recent public appearances and his Twitter feed to savage voting by mail as a process that can’t be trusted.

“It's a case of what Trump actually says mattering a lot more than what his campaign does. The campaign is working hard to get absentees requested and, soon, returned; but Trump bashing mail voting repeatedly makes strong Republicans much less likely to do it,” Wilson said.

Democrats, who were widely criticized for running a lackluster turnout operation four years ago, say they are capitalizing on a wave of anti-Trump energy to bank ballots. The party used its convention to press early voting, with prominent figures like former first lady Michelle Obama imploring people to cast ballots as soon as possible.

They point to Florida as a major bright spot. Democrats lead Republicans in vote-by-mail requests 2.1 million to 1.4 million, according to a GOP consultant who is tracking the figures. At this same point in 2016, Democrats trailed Republicans in requests.

“While Trump is busy kneecapping Republican efforts to sign up his supporters to vote by mail with debunked claims about absentee voting, Democrats have a massive grassroots army focused on turning out voters early and on Election Day, and we're already seeing strong results and real energy-- including among first time voters," said Michael Gwin, a Biden campaign spokesperson.

Joshua Hicks' state legislative campaign in Florida's Nassau and Duval counties is encouraging voters to request their vote-by-mail ballots as are the local parties, along with the Biden campaign. Hicks' campaign has been putting a great deal of energy into reaching out to Democrats who missed either the 2016 or 2018 election, encouraging them to request a ballot and Joshua told me that they have been seeing real progress. In Florida, Democrats have a massive vote-by-mail advantage, and during the primary in August, you saw Democrats return these ballots in big numbers. "Here in Duval County," he told me, "Democrats outvoted Republicans in the primary on August 18th-- thanks in large part due to our efforts to get people to vote-by-mail and return their ballots. Here in Duval and in Nassau counties in my district, we have designated mail ballot 'drop boxes' in case people do not trust the mail system... I hope Democratic and anti-Trump voters across District 11 here in Northeast Florida and really across the country will request a vote-by-mail ballot and fill it out immediately when it arrives and place it back in the mail. But more importantly, we all must vote. Whether it is by mail, early or on Election Day, we must strengthen our Democracy by turning out the vote and rejecting Donald Trump once and for all. We are working hard to encourage people to vote-by-mail and to vote early here in Florida. Ballots start going out in Florida on September 24th and the earlier you send it back in, the quicker it counts. We can't take this election for granted."

Bob Lynch is the Democrat taking on Trumpist Daniel Perez in a swing state House district in Miami-Dade. Vote by mail seems to have a different set of challenges for Democrats in his area. "Given all of the information about Russian penetration of various levels of our elections system in Florida," he told me earlier, "you’d think there would be a bigger desire to Vote By Mail. The reality is that we have lagged behind most of the state in VBM applications. The reason behind this is largely cultural. My district is unique in that have a large proportion of immigrants, first generation, and second generation Americans. Almost all from countries with a longstanding and deeply seeded issue with strongmen and fraudulent elections. Participating in Democratic elections is often seen as a family activity to be celebrated by everyone going out to exercise their right to vote. Donald Trump has not helped things out by his continued unfounded accusations of rampant fraud in Vote By Mail. Couple that with slowed down processing times with the Miami-Dade USPS and we don’t have a good situation. The GOP’s Soviet style and Russian aided propaganda machine has once again been deployed to make people believe the opposite of what is true. Maybe if the media gave more attention to experts like Jenny Cohn, who has worked tirelessly to expose the vulnerabilities of wireless modems present in Miami-Dade County voting machines, we wouldn’t be in a situation like this. Yet here we are. Trump’s assault on Vote By Mail is not the accidental rantings of a delusional madman. I’m hoping that the larger state level advantage Dems have in VBM will win the day. However, more my particular race and in a county as important as MDC, we are proving the age old adage that all politics is local."

Adam Christensen is a candidate for Congress on the other end of Florida, up north. Vote by mail is a major part of his campaign. "By now," he told me today, "we all know the power of absentee voting and vote by mail. If you have an absentee ballot you are far more likely to vote than someone showing up at the polls. After speaking with Alan Grayson early into our campaign, it became clear to me that this was an opportunity that we had to take advantage of and if we were successful it would help to close the gap in the number of votes we needed to win. The goal of a campaign is to run up the score in places you will win and cut the margins in places you won’t. With that in mind we got to work.

1- Our phone banking operation has included information and links for getting every democratic signed up to vote by mail (even before the  primary). We have increased these efforts especially in the rural areas.

2- We have progressive firepower coming from across the nation to achieve this. Humanity Forward and Done Waiting have both announced their support and thrown their phone banking operations behind us to help register as many Democrats for VBM as  we can before time  runs out.

3- CHASE THE BALLOTS: With this firepower it gives us the ability to call everyone that has a ballot to make sure it gets in. We have up to the day information about who has and who has not turned them in. Grassroots firepower, with more effective methods. GAME CHANGING

"When a playbook doesn’t work," he concluded, "you throw it out. The way Democratic campaigns were traditionally run in Florida is over. We are rewriting the playbook because the way things have been done doesn’t work. Adapt or Die, and the Republican Party is dying."

We Get Letters, We Get Letters-- Or At Least We Used To... Before Trump Hired Louis DeJoy To Destroy The Post Office

Louis & Donald Fix The Post Office by Nancy Ohanian

I'm absolutely positive that Trump gave DeJoy a blanket pardon before DeJoy went for work for him. Either that or DeJoy is plum loco. On Tuesday DeJoy issued a disingenuous official statement on his disenfranchisement shenanigans, acknowledging that the postal service which he has been systematically disrupting, "will play a critical role this year in delivering election mail for millions of voters across the country... I want to assure all Americans of the following:

• Retail hours at Post Offices will not change.
• Mail processing equipment and blue collection boxes will remain where they are.
• No mail processing facilities will be closed.
• And we reassert that overtime has, and will continue to be, approved as needed.

When he said "mail processing equipment and blue collection boxes will remain where they are," he meant in the land-fills they've already been dumped in.

And when he said "overtime has, and will continue to be, approved as needed," he meant by his own lackeys who are have basically two jobs:

• Destroy public trust in the post office so it can be sold off and privatized.
• Disenfranchise Democratic voters to help Trump steal the election.

Not part of the public statement, though, was the order he gave not to reconnect and mail sorting machines and not to reinstall any blue boxes he had ordered removed. This was a memo from one of DeJoy's stooges, Kevin Couch the national director of Maintenance Operations:

Please message out to your respective Maintenance Managers tonight.

They are not to reconnect / reinstall machines that have previously been disconnected without approval from HQ Maintenance, no matter what direction they are getting from their plant manager," wrote Kevin Couch, Director of Maintenance Operations. "Please have them flow that request through you then on to me for a direction."

A follow up e-mail to every regional maintenance manager read: "We are not to reconnect any machines that have previously been disconnected." This was (in part), Pelosi's statement after she met with DeJoy on Wednesday: "The Postmaster General’s alleged pause is wholly insufficient and does not reverse damage already wreaked.  The Postmaster General frankly admitted that he had no intention of replacing the sorting machines, blue mailboxes and other key mail infrastructure that have been removed and that plans for adequate overtime, which is critical for the timely delivery of mail, are not in the works.  All of these changes directly jeopardize the election and disproportionately threaten to disenfranchise voters in communities of color.  At the same time, we are highly concerned that the slowdown of the delivery of medicines to veterans is not being sufficiently addressed."

90 Members of Congress-- all Democrats-- sent the 6 members of the Postal Service's board of governors a letter calling for the dismissal of DeJoy, also on Wednesday. "We write to urge you to immediately remove Postmaster General Louis DeJoy," they began, "using your powers under 39 U.S. Code § 202. Mr. DeJoy has used his time as Postmaster General to sabotage the United States Postal Service (USPS) and he must be removed immediately to protect this critical institution. Despite recent claims by Mr. DeJoy that implementation of certain changes may be delayed, he has already done considerable damage to the institution and we believe his conflicts of interest are insurmountable.

And that brings us to a worrying assertion by top investigative journalist Greg Palast that voting by mail with DeJoy running the post office "is playing Russian Roulette with your vote." He recommends that "since voting in-person on Election Day can kill you, to avoid the pitfalls of vote by mail, get your absentee ballot from your local county Board of Elections and return it there. Or, use drop boxes in states that have them. Otherwise, ask for your ballot at least 8 weeks before the election. In most states, you can take the mail-in ballot to an early polling station-- and safely drop it off."

Palast told radio host Mike Papantonio that an MIT study found that even pre-Trump 22% of all vote by mail ballots don't get counted. One in 10 people who ask for absentee ballots never get them and one in 5 mailed-in ballots get junked. When Papantonio asked him "How safe is vote by mail," he responded that it isn't. "you can have all these jerks in Hawaiian shirts, the Boogaloo Boys, the Proud Boys, they're going to go in… Trump’s calling for 50,000 volunteers. It's not an intimidation army. People have that wrong. The real danger’s that are going to go in and say, I don't like that signature on that ballot. That ballot was taped shut instead of a sealed shut by licking the envelope. I'm not kidding. And if you think it's just Republicans who do that, in New York this past last week the Democratic Party challenged the counting of 28,000 mail-in ballots-- the Democratic Party. Once they established that precedent, how many ballots do you think Trump's people will challenge? How many millions I should say. So it's not safe to mail in your ballot."

He reminded his listeners that the Democratic Party in California shafted Bernie out of 553,000 votes in the March primary. "That's what the Democratic Party did. But nationwide, what you have is a mass wipe out of voters by the Republicans. We've had a big purge of the voter list. 16.7 million people, according to the federal government, have been erased from the voter rolls. They're going to have a tough time getting their mail-in ballots if you're not on the voter rolls. And the Republicans have learned from the Democrats in New York and the Democrats in California and throughout the nation they're going to be challenging every single mail-in ballot that comes in."

Republicans Starting To Panic As Public Anger Grows Over The Post Office

This week's most predictible endorsement went to Biden and Harris yesterday from the National Association of Letter Carriers, a 300,000 member union. With Trump and the congressional Republicans full steam ahead on trying to destroy the post office-- Trump so he can prevent widespread voting and the congressional Republicans as part of their privatization mania.

It isn't just the big postal workers union endorsement-- this whole war against the post office is hurting Trump. Otherthan doctrinaire Republicans, the public doesn't like it. As Jonathan Bernstein put it in his Bloomberg News column yesterday "The thing is that Trump, by opposing money for the U.S. Postal Service and supporting 'reforms' that have slowed it down, is just handing former Vice President Joe Biden yet another easy campaign issue. Democrats may or may not be able to overturn new procedures that are causing significant problems, but they certainly can make sure that anyone who’s waiting on a letter or a package thinks that Trump is responsible when it doesn’t show up on time. And that’s not the kind of thing politicians want voters to blame them for."

Erin Cox, Elise Viebeck, Jason Bogage a d Christopher Ingham reported that Trump's corrupted Postal Service warned 46 states-- as it slows down mail deliveries-- that some votes sent my mail may not be counted. "Anticipating an avalanche of absentee ballots, the U.S. Postal Service recently sent detailed letters to 46 states and D.C. warning that it cannot guarantee all ballots cast by mail for the November election will arrive in time to be counted... The letters sketch a grim possibility for the tens of millions of Americans eligible for a mail-in ballot this fall: Even if people follow all of their state’s election rules, the pace of Postal Service delivery may disqualify their votes. The Postal Service’s warnings of potential disenfranchisement came as the agency undergoes a sweeping organizational and policy overhaul amid dire financial conditions." Those dire financial conditions were entirely and purposefully created by conservatives.

"Cost-cutting moves," the Post quartet continued, "have already delayed mail delivery by as much as a week in some places, and a new decision to decommission 10 percent of the Postal Service’s sorting machines sparked widespread concern the slowdowns will only worsen. Rank-and-file postal workers say the move is ill-timed and could sharply diminish the speedy processing of flat mail, including letters and ballots."

Yesterday, when asked by Ayman Mohyeldin on MSNBC if the American people will have a free, fair and credible election in November, Pelosi say "Not if the president has anything to do with it... a domestic assault on our Constitution."

Petrified of the growing anger of voters-- and his open conference-- Kevin McCarthy lied his ass off, telling the public that Republicans do not support withholding funding from the Postal Service. "The Postal Service will have the funding that it needs. We will make sure of that. We want to make sure we have an accurate election. I think any Republican that gets their ballot in the mail should vote and make sure their vote is counted." People are wise to his word games as he licks Trump's boots, as even members of his own caucus are saying now.

Jessica Piper reported for the Bangor Daily News that Susan Collins-- losing her reelection bid and absolutely desperate to show she isn't joined-at-the-hip to Trump (which she is)-- found something she can oppose him on. Trying to sound like she just woke up and is suddenly on Mainers' side, she said that "efforts by the U.S. Postal Service to cut costs could backfire amid reported mail delays in Maine and across the country and reiterated support to increase funding to the embattled agency." Has she told Trump and McConnell?

Mitt Romney, somewhat more credibly than Collins, broke with Trump on this too, telling the Sutherland Institute that "politicians"-- a reference to McConnell and Trump-- "attacking the vote by mail system are threatening global democracy but stopped short of criticizing President Donald Trump, who has been openly against an expected surge of mail-in ballots. The United States must stand as an example to more fragile democratic nations to show that elections can be held in a free and fair manner, Romney said. He urged the federal government to make every effort to ensure that people are able to vote in the general election this November... Romney said he has seen no evidence that voting by mail has led to fraud and that this voting method may be even more secure than electronic voting because it’s less likely to invite hacking interference by foreign entities. He said he would support providing additional funds to states to strengthen their voting systems."

And this is the letter my friend Rod wrote to each of them this morning. Maybe you want to consider doing one like it too?

Gentlemen of the USPS Board of Governors:

Mr. DeJoy is engaged in a blatantly partisan exercise to cripple the institution you oversee ahead of November 3. With it, he seeks to effectively destroy American democracy. It is incumbent upon you to intervene to halt this treasonous activity.

Please do your job and remove him immediately!

One very concerned citizen,

Rod Colburn

P.S. You each appear to be white males. You don’t look at all like America, do you?!

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Now they need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots... Now, if we don't make a deal, that means they don't get the money. That means they can't have universal mail-in voting. They just can't have it.

Your guess: Is the above quote from Joseph Stalin or Donald Trump? (Answer below)

Sure, the Repugs will tell you that mail-in voting is bad, bad, evil. Even the ones that vote by mail themselves will tell you that. Especially them! They'll scream it from the rooftops. They're on TV 24 hours a day now, screaming their message. Of course, all it is is the fact that voting by mail is fine for them. They just don't want YOU to vote by mail and in effect, because of the pandemic they've had such a hand in spreading, voting at all. Not to mention the extensive voting suppression measures republicans have put in place. Trump himself said that if everyone voted by mail, the Repug Party would never win anything. So? What's so wrong with that? Democracy baby! Democracy! Republicans are also scared of polling numbers that show far more democrats wanting to vote with a mail-in ballot than risk their lives and the lives of family members by standing in line next to maskless repugs. The latest Monmouth Law poll shows that 81% of those who want to vote by mail intend to vote for democrats whereas somewhat under 20% want to vote for Republicans.

As time passes and Trump gets even more desperate and crazy, he is getting even more out in the open about saving his job, his future, and his perverted vision for what's left of America and its ideals. He wants no money going to the U.S. Post Office if it's going to make it easier for people to vote. He's terrified that they might vote against him and he just doesn't have it all set up and fixed like Russia, Belarus, North Korea, and other totalitarian dictatorships do. Trump's vision is led by the fact that he envies those places where the strongman wins with 90%+ of the vote and those remaining 9% just seem to disappear into a river or an unmarked grave in the same dump where bales of uncounted ballots are "stored." 90%+! Now, that's what Trump calls the approval which he craves! That's what Republicans call good government, nudge nudge, wink wink! Of course, even with 90%+ approval, Trump's bloated ego would be so aggrieved that he would whine about those who didn't vote for him long after he had them dispensed with.

How would a Republican respond to tonight's meme? Among other responses, they'd blurt out something about people not sending out as many Christmas cards as they used to. That's true. Sales of Christmas cards are down 43% since 2001 but the thing is, approximately 1.6 BILLION have been purchased in each of the last couple of years and 1.3 BILLION were still mailed each year. The postal service handles them just fine so there should be no problem in handling mail-in ballots. I'm sure repugs are happy about that. Christmas, Jesus, and all that. They want their precious Christmas cards getting to the recipient on time and they do as long as the sender doesn't wait until the last few days. 1.3 BILLION of 'em! Now, the same assclowns are telling us that the post office can't handle 100 Million ballots on time or at all? Less than 10% of the number of Christmas cards? Fuzzy republican math, I guess.

The quote above came from Trump of course, our president who dreams of being Stalin. He's being so bold about messing with the election that he's now just letting his thoughts rip right out in the open and admitting his plan. Being a complete psychopath, he is eager to hold the election hostage, not only because he wants to control it but because he relishes the idea of impoverished Americans being thrown into the streets for lack of what republicans view as $600 welfare checks and other measures to offset the ravages of the coronavirus plague that they have deliberately worsened and continue to worsen, perhaps for this very reason. I mean, we all know how the Republican mind works. What Trump is doing here is a prime example of that. But, think about this: If what we hear from him are the only thoughts he's comfortable with revealing, what are the ones he is not? It is likely that only his confidants such as his family, Hannity, Carlson, Moscow Mitch, and closest staff know what else lurks in that fetid orange cesspool of a brain, but, we can certainly conjecture.

As a bonus, here's Trump Economic Advisor Larry Kudlow's admission:

So much of the democratic asks are really liberal wishlists we don't want to have--voting rights aid to aliens, and so forth. That's not our game.

Yep, Larry! Can't go having those pesky voting rights now, can we Larry. Jesus Christ! Move this assclown to the front of the guilotine line! Why should he have to wait as long as citizens who want to vote?

Trump Is Blocking A Pandemic Relief Package To Prevent Congress From Keeping The Post Office Alive

On Wednesday, Trump, lying, tried stampeding Congress and bending it to his will by declaring there won't be a pandemic relief package. The Washington Post reported that " A new attempt to restart economic relief negotiations between the White House and Democrats ended just minutes after it began on Wednesday, with President Trump appearing to cast doubt on the whole process by announcing a deal is "not going to happen." The sociopath in the White House said "The bill’s not going to happen because they don’t even want to talk about it, because we can’t give them the kind of ridiculous things that they want that have nothing to do with the China virus."

The Reuters story made it clear what he's up to: trying to wreck the U.S. Post office in the hope of being more easily able to steal the election in November. Patricia Zengerle and David Morgan reported that on Thursday he said "his team was rejecting Democrats’ bid to include funds for the U.S. Postal Service and to shore up election infrastructure in a new coronavirus relief bill, as he vowed to block money to facilitate mail-in voting. Señor Trumpanzee: "The items are the post office and the $3.5 billion for mail-in voting. If we don’t make the deal, that means they can’t have the money, that means they can’t have universal mail-in voting. It just can’t happen." Zengerle and Morgan reminded their readers that "Roughly one in four U.S. voters cast their ballots by mail in 2016, and Trump himself has voted by mail. But Trump and his fellow Republicans have criticized state efforts to make voting by mail more widely available, saying without evidence it could lead to widespread fraud. Election exerts say mail voting is as secure as any other method."

Pelosi said any coronavirus relief bill should include billions of dollars to protect not just Americans’ right to vote but also essential services, like mailing prescription medicines, during the pandemic.

“You would think they’d have a little sensitivity, but so obsessed are they to undermine absentee voting that this is their connection there,” Pelosi told reporters. “So the president says he’s not putting up any money for absentee voting and he’s not putting up any money for the Postal Service, undermining the health of our democracy.”

...New Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who has donated $2.7 million to Trump and his fellow Republicans since 2017, has ordered operational changes and a clampdown on overtime in a bid to fix the financially troubled Postal Service, which reported a net loss of $2.2 billion in the last quarter.

Cost-cutting measures put in place by DeJoy have led to mail delays across the country, raising concerns that they could complicate mail-based voting. State election officials have scrambled to expand mail-voting capacity as experts say the pandemic could prompt up to half of all U.S. voters to cast their ballots by mail.

The Postal Service in recent months has encouraged election officials to send their ballots using regular first-class mail, rather than the cheaper and slower bulk mail rate that many states use, to ensure ballots are delivered in a timely manner.

In the past, the Postal Service has generally treated all election and political mail as if it were first-class, the service’s internal watchdog said in a 2019 report. That has caused some Democrats to accuse DeJoy of trying to undermine mail-in voting.

GOP sleaze-bags Steven Mnuchin and Mark Meadows are leading the charge for Trump. Lisa Mascaro reported for AP that "With talks stalemated, Trump has resorted to bypassing Congress, issuing the executive actions that Meadows warned would come if the White House failed to reach a deal. The president’s orders for jobless aid and other actions are only expected provide modest relief to some 20 million Americans at risk of eviction and even more who are out of work, halving unemployment assistance to $300 a week. On a conference call with Republican senators, Meadows and Mnuchin left the impression there are no new talks scheduled with Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi."

CNN went right to the point: Trump "opposes much-needed funding for the United States Postal Service because he doesn't want to see it used for mail-in voting this November. By directly linking USPS funding to mail-in voting, Trump is fueling allegations that he is trying to manipulate the postal system for political gain. The pandemic has led to record-shattering levels of voting-by-mail, but Trump has tried to restrict the voting method because he says it will hurt his re-election and Republicans across the board."

Biden's campaign manager, Andrew Bates: "The President of the United States is sabotaging a basic service that hundreds of millions of people rely upon, cutting a critical lifeline for rural economies and for delivery of medicines, because he wants to deprive Americans of their fundamental right to vote safely during the most catastrophic public health crisis in over 100 years."

This is a highly unpopular stance by Trump and Democratic congressional candidates are increasingly using it to beat up on the Trump enablers they're running against. Few members have been more slavishly devoted to Trump than Omaha's Donald Bacon and progressive Democrat Kara Eastman took him to task yesterday for his refusal to denounce Trump's efforts at sabotaging the post office (and the election). She noted that The US Postal Service employs over 600,000 Americans, including almost 100,000 veterans and that people of color comprise 40% of the USPS workforce. "Congressman Bacon, this continued attack on the Postal Service is undermining workers and serving to promote voter suppression," Eastman said. "The US Postal Service is an American institution, protected by the Constitution. Donald Trump and Republican politicians like Don Bacon have been trying to undermine it for years and are now sabotaging it to rig the election. This attack on the USPS is an attack on American service and values. It’s time for Bacon to stand up to his party and stop these attacks on one of our most basic and fundamental institutions."

"We cannot allow this administration to sabotage the Post Office so they can cheat the election. Folks across the nine counties of the Texas 10th district need the Post Office to safely vote by mail, get prescription medications delivered, or run their small business," said Mike Siegel, a public school teacher turned civil rights attorney running in the gerrymandered central Texas district to unseat Republican corporate crony Michael McCaul, an unabashed Trumpist. "My opponent has taken over $50,000 from corporate PACs with a direct interest in gutting the post office. I am not taking a dime of corporate PAC money."


Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) sits on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, where he serves as the chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and is on 2 other subcommittees-- the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus and the Subcommittee on Government Operations, which is where all the action is on the Republican Party play to destroy the post office. "The GOP attack on the Post Office," he told me today, "is definitely a sinister attack on the 2020 Election itself and we must do everything we can to stop it. But it’s also more broadly an effort to kill American democracy. The Post Office has been a central crossroads and symbol of American communications, culture, and political community from the beginning of the Republic. In the name of our first postmaster Benjamin Franklin and all the other great Americans who worked for the Post Office, including Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman, we must take down the campaign to destroy the Post Office. This is the struggle of our lifetime."

Southern California congressman and realist Ted Lieu wasn't sugar-coating the dire nature of this disaster. He told me today that "This election is too important for me to promise things to make you feel better but won’t actually happen. The stark truth is the House cannot adequately fund the Post Office without the consent of Trump. The only option is a veto override with the Republican controlled Senate. That is not going to happen. That means our only solution is to empower the voters. We need you to spread the word that if people are going to vote by mail, they need to mail their ballot at least 10 mailing days out from Nov 3, which would be Oct 22. That’s how we win."

Adam Christensen is the progressive Democrat trying to flip Ted Yoho's north-central Florida district blue. Much of that district is rural and dependent on the post office. "This attack on one of governments best run and organized agencies," he told me, "is an attack on rural America. It is an attack on small business owners and those that rely on USPS everyday for shipping. It is an attack on our towns and our neighbors who are tired of paying outrageous fees for basic services. Attempting to destroy good paying jobs in our community and replace them with corporate monopolies is what has killed our town centers for the last 30 years. The Republican party is dying but it appears that they want to finalize the destruction of the middle class on their way out."

How Existential A Threat To Democracy Is Trump And What Do We Do About It?

I don't trust the voting machines... never did, never will. They're too easily hackable. And I've thought that Trump's hysteria over vote-by-mail was because he had it all down exactly how the election would be stolen via machine tampering. With the appointment of future federal penitentiary inhabitant Louis DeJoy as postmaster general, Trump may have handled the vote-by-mail threat to his November plans.

In an OpEd for The Hill, Al Hunt wrote that "The charge by Trump and his attorney general that mail voting risks massive fraud is a canard. Spencer Cox, the conservative Republican lieutenant governor of Utah, who oversees voting in one of five states that exclusively votes by mail, says it's a 'tremendous success' with little fraud. The stated reason for going after the Postal Service is red ink which totaled $8.8 billion last year. A little bit of context on Donald Trump worrying about deficits: As a businessman, he bragged about being 'the King of Debt,' and on his watch, the federal deficit has almost doubled to close to $1 trillion, before the pandemic.

The new postmaster general is a Trump loyalist. He has given $2 million to Republicans and Trump campaigns since 2016, the latest being a $210,000 contribution to the Trump Victory Fund in February. He was going to be finance chair of the Republicans’ Charlotte convention before it was curtailed; his wife has been nominated to be U.S. ambassador to Canada.

DeJoy told the Postal Board of Governors Friday that he's not making any changes that will impede voting by mail and declared: although he has a "a good relationship" with the president, any assertion he'd make decisions at the direction of Trump "is wholly off-base."

In response to an email from me, he wouldn't say whether he spoke with Trump about the job prior to his appointment or has communicated with him since taking over.

He has not assuaged Democrats.

Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-VA), chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Government Operations, told me: "Trump has appointed a donor and political crony to undermine the postal service for partisan gain."

In the first month and half under DeJoy, instructions have gone out to the more than 600,000 postal workers to curb any overtime and cut back services.

There's a more pressing need for overtime during this health crisis. Most postal workers are out every day, exposed to the virus. Three months ago-- the latest data-- some 2,400 postal employees had tested positive for the virus; 17,000 had been quarantined, and scores died. Those numbers undoubtedly have risen since then.

DeJoy is playing with political fire.

In a recent Hart Research-North Star Opinion Research national survey, 94 percent of Americans say the Postal Service is important to them, and there's widespread backing of federal support. A large number of the 31,000 post offices are in rural America, areas that are generally more dependent on mail delivery and that are represented by Republicans.

This morning I woke up to this ominous tweet by by friend Frank Schaeffer:

Jamelle Bouie's NY Times column, published at the same time, came to a similar conclusion: To keep a crooked authoritarian threat to democracy from claiming victory on Nov. 3, Americans patriots who can vote in person may well have to. This is gettin' serious, friends.

There’s no mystery about what President Trump intends to do if he holds a lead on election night in November. 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’ll have teams of lawyers challenging counts and ballots across the country.

He also seems to be counting on having the advantage of mail slowdowns, engineered by the recently installed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. Fewer pickups and deliveries could mean more late-arriving ballots and a better shot at dismissing votes before they’re even opened, especially if the campaign has successfully sued to block states from extending deadlines. We might even see a Brooks Brothers riot or two, where well-heeled Republican operatives stage angry and voluble protests against ballot counts and recounts.

If Trump 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 Trump 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.

...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. To speed up the process, states could permit election officials to verify and count mail-in ballots even before Election Day. 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.

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 Trump 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. It is easy to imagine a replay of Florida 2000, except on a national scale.

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. Trump 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.

Earlier this year, a group of more than 100 people-- Republicans, Democrats, senior political operatives and members of the media-- gathered to role play the November election, using predetermined rules and procedures. “In each scenario other than a Biden landslide,” writes Nils Gilman of the Berggruen Institute, who helped organize the exercise, “we ended up with a constitutional crisis that lasted until the inauguration, featuring violence in the streets and a severely disrupted administrative transition.”

There you have it. To head off the worst outcomes, Trump 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 take.

Christine Pellegrino is favored to replace a worthless Republican Trumpist on Long Island. This morning she mentioned to me that "Trump's popularity or lack there-of is absolutely going to drive people to the polls, or their mailboxes, to vote. But I'm not taking my foot off the gas. At the end of the day, voters care about common sense issues: good jobs, good schools, and healthcare. Talking to voters about the change Albany can create for all of us is empowering for the disaffected. The voters want a real representative. They’re tired of lazy, lifetime politicians and they’re demanding more than they just show up for photos. Down ballot candidates like me need to make sure that people mobilized by the 'Trump factor' fill out their entire ballots."

My old friend, Jerry Leichtling, came up with a brilliant idea-- that's what brilliant people like Jerry do... come up with brilliant ideas. Take look at this proposal he just sent me:

Inasmuch as E-Commerce companies have benefitted tremendously from the Covid-19 Pandemic, these same companies should be willing to do the people of the United States a massive public service. Given the Trump-ordered slowdown of the United States Postal Service there is no reason why federally-bonded companies like Amazon, Fedex and UPS should not, as a patriotic public service, pick up all voters' ballots and deliver them to Local Boards of Elections. These companies, and hundreds more, already do massive business with the Postal Service. They have literally millions of employees and are NOT slowing down. Please write to the CEO’s of Amazon-- Jeff Bezos (Jeff@Amazon.com); Fedex-- Fred Smith (Fredric.Smith@Fedex.Com) and UPS, Carol Tome (CTome@UPS.com) with the heading or hashtag Special Delivery Democracy. and send copies to your elected representatives as well. Let’s see if we can derail Trump’s express train to tyranny.

Counting Sheep by Nancy Ohanian

The Fascist Pig Is Stealing The Election In Plain Sight And Democracy Seems Incapable Of Protecting Itself-- The US Postal Service

I've thought all year that the reason Trump squealed like a stuck pig about the postal service was because he and his Russian allies had the electronic voting machines rigged in enough counties to throw him another electoral college win. Vote by mail would kill that. So he had to kill the post office, conveniently, an institution, Republicans hate anyway. "Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee have taken to the courts dozens of times as part of a $20 million effort to challenge voting rules," wrote Politico's Anita Kumar, "including filing their own lawsuits in several battleground states, including Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Nevada. And around the time Trump started musing about delaying the election last week, aides and outside advisers began scrambling to ponder possible executive actions he could take to curb mail-in voting-- everything from directing the postal service to not deliver certain ballots to stopping local officials from counting them after Election Day... [I]t has allowed Trump to present himself as a fighter on an issue that many of his most fervent supporters have taken up in the last few months. Trump fans, said John Fredericks, a conservative radio host who serves on the Trump campaign’s advisory committee, 'think Trump is going to win legitimately, but the Democrats are trying to steal the election by manipulating mail-out ballots. They want the president to jawbone enough so there’s a level of outrage to get rid of these ballots.' Just because Trump’s claims of rampant mail-in voting fraud aren’t supported by evidence doesn’t mean election experts aren’t concerned about problems holding a presidential election during a pandemic. It’s unknown whether the United States Postal Service can handle a surge of mail-in ballots in a timely fashion."

Writting for the Washington Post yesterday, Jacob Bogage reported about how Louis DeJoy, Trump's crooked new postmaster general is working quickly and ruthlessly to destroy the U.S. postal service from within. "DeJoy unveiled a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s mail service, displacing the two top executives overseeing day-to-day operations... The shake-up came as congressional Democrats called for an investigation of DeJoy and the cost-cutting measures that have slowed mail delivery and ensnared ballots in recent primary elections. Twenty-three postal executives were reassigned or displaced, the new organizational chart shows. Analysts say the structure centralizes power around DeJoy, a former logistics executive and major ally of President Trump, and de-emphasizes decades of institutional postal knowledge. The reshuffling threatens to heighten tensions between postal officials and lawmakers, who are troubled by delivery delays-- the Postal Service banned employees from working overtime and making extra trips to deliver mail-- and wary of the Trump administration’s influence on the Postal Service as the coronavirus pandemic rages and November’s election draws near."

Ted Lieu, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, is watching closely-- and very realistic. "Democrats," he told me last night, "are going to do everything we can to stop voter suppression, including by the Post Office. At the same time, here is the truth: with conservative control of the Supreme Court, the White House, and the Senate, most if not all of the efforts by Democrats will not succeed in the next three months. That means voter suppression will occur. And the best way to overcome it is to prepare voters. That means we need to educate people that if they are going to vote by mail, they need to vote early. If they decide to vote on November 3, they need to prepare for long lines. Bring a meal, a lawn chair, a game, whatever is necessary to wait in a potentially long line to cast the vote. That is how we win, by preparing voters to overcome obstacles instead of promising actions we can't deliver on in the next three months."

DeJoy is at war with congressional Democrats and there's no doubt in my mind that if Pelosi and Schumer could, they'd throw him in prison. But they can't. Bogage reported that Jerry Connolly (D-VA), chair of the House subcommittee responsible for postal oversight, called the reorganization "a deliberate sabotage" to the nation’s mail service and a "Trojan Horse." Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a member of the subcommittee, told me yesterday that "All the Oversight Committee Democratic Members have been focused on defending the Post Office against right-wing attack ever since Trump came to power. The defense of the Post Office now assumes paramount importance and urgency as it will be a central transmission belt for delivery of ballots and votes in Nobember. Trump and his team have been making overtly hostile moves to undermine postal capacity, so expect intensive oversight hearings, demands for information and legislative action to stop Trump’s unfolding sabotage of the Post Office and 2020 presidential election."

The Postal Service will implement a hiring freeze, according to the reorganization announcement, and will ask for voluntary early retirements. It also will realign into three “operating units”-- retail and delivery, logistics and processing, and commerce and business solutions-- and scale down from seven regions to four.

The structure displaces postal executives with decades of experience, moving some to new positions and others out of leadership roles entirely, including McAdams, Williams and chief commerce and business solutions officer Jacqueline Krage Strako, who previously held the title of executive vice president and chief customer and marketing officer.

...[T]he changes worried postal analysts, who say the tone of DeJoy’s first eight weeks and his restructuring have recast the nation’s mail service as a for-profit arm of the government, rather than an essential service.

“He keeps referring to the USPS as ‘our business.’ But he’s been appointed postmaster general. You don’t run a business,” said Philip Rubio, a history professor at North Carolina A&T State University and a former postal worker. “He’s not accountable to shareholders. He’s accountable to the American people and Congress.”

Earlier Friday, congressional Democrats demanded an investigation of DeJoy’s cost-cutting initiatives, which postal workers blame for delivery slowdowns.

A letter signed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY) and seven other Democrats, including Connolly, urged Postal Service Inspector General Tammy L. Whitcomb to examine how DeJoy came to implement policies that prohibit postal workers from taking overtime or making extra trips to deliver mail on time, and how such delays specifically affect election mail.

“Given the ongoing concerns about the adverse impacts of Trump Administration policies on the quality and efficiency of the Postal Service, we ask that you conduct an audit of all operational changes put in place by Mr. DeJoy and other Trump Administration officials in 2020,” the letter states.

It also asks Whitcomb to review the finances of DeJoy and his wife, Aldona Wos, the nominee for ambassador to Canada. The couple’s holdings include between $30.1 million and $75.3 million in assets in USPS competitors or contractors, according to a financial disclosure Wos filed with the Office of Government Ethics when she was nominated. Postal Service mail processing contractor XPO Logistics-- which acquired DeJoy’s company New Breed Logistics in 2014-- represents the vast majority of those holdings. Their combined stake in competitors UPS and trucking company J.B. Hunt is roughly $265,000.

DeJoy had 30 days from taking over the agency to disclose any assets that present a conflict of interest, according to the Postal Service. DeJoy in a statement said he had “done what is necessary to ensure that I am and will remain in compliance with those obligations.”

“We would welcome the Inspector General to look into the steps we are taking to make the Postal Service more efficient,” Postal Service spokesman David Partenheimer said. “She will find that much of what we are doing is designed to address recommendations that her office has made in recent years.”

Agapi Doulaveris, a spokesperson for the Office of Inspector General, said the department had received the letter, but could not comment on ongoing work.

“I would absolutely hope the inspector general would look into why the mail is being slowed, because that’s outrageous,” Rubio said. “Especially during the pandemic and with America about to vote, this is the worst time to be changing policies.”

DeJoy met Wednesday with Pelosi, Schumer, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to discuss the new mail-handling procedures and the Postal Service’s tenuous financial position. The agency is projected to run out of money between March and October 2021, though it just accessed a $10 billion Treasury loan authorized last week in an early coronavirus relief package.

During the USPS’s quarterly board of governors meeting Friday, DeJoy said he negotiated the loan terms with Mnuchin. Upon accessing the loan, the Postal Service, subject to confidentiality restrictions, will hand over proprietary contracts for its 10 largest service agreements with private sector shippers. Those businesses use the mail service for “last mile” package delivery from distribution centers to consumers’ homes or businesses.

Mnuchin had sought sweeping operational control of the Postal Service in previous loan terms, including provisions that would allow the Trump administration to approve senior postal personnel decisions, service contracts with third-party shippers, collective bargaining negotiation strategies and high package prices.

In April, shortly after Congress authorized the loan, Trump called the Postal Service “a joke” and said he would not approve any emergency funding unless the USPS quadrupled package delivery prices, a move analysts said would quickly bankrupt the agency by chasing away customers to private-sector competitors.

DeJoy, at the governors meeting Friday, said that though he has a “good relationship” with Trump-- he’s donated more than $2 million to the Trump campaign or Republican causes since 2016, and chaired the finance committee for the 2020 GOP convention-- he does not take direction from Trump on postal issues.

“While I certainly have a good relationship with the President of the United States, the notion that I would ever make decisions concerning the Postal Service at the direction of the President, or anyone else in the administration, is wholly off-base,” he said. “I serve at the pleasure of the governors of the Postal Service, a group that is bipartisan by statute and that will evaluate my performance in a nonpartisan fashion.”

Coronavirus funding for the Postal Service-- and Schumer and Pelosi’s demand that DeJoy roll back the cost-cutting policies-- emerged as a sticking point between Democrats and the White House in negotiations on a “Phase IV” relief package. The House passed a package with $25 billion for the Postal Service that does not need to be repaid to replace the Treasury loan. The Trump administration has objected to any direct aid to the Postal Service.

On his Bradcast radio show Friday, Brad Friedman warned "Never mind the pre-election polling numbers you are hearing. Given the way Donald Trump and his Administration and acolytes around the country are actively working to undermine this year's November 3rd general elections, you'd make a mistake to place Joe Biden's odds of being declared the winner at any better than 50/50 at best at this point. Disturbing comments from our guest today only underscore that concern yet again." Even as Trump, reported Friedman, continues to make false claims about absentee voting (after fraudulently doing so himself!), his recently appointed Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, is now undermining the U.S. Postal Service itself in advance of what will be, by far, the largest Vote-by-Mail elections in all 50 states in the nation's history. "The Republican Trump mega-donor DeJoy, with no previous USPS experience, issued several directives upon taking office in June that have resulted in the slow down of mail delivery. And while both DeJoy and other leadership at the 250-year old Postal Service (whose first Postmaster General was Benjamin Franklin) have claimed the new directives are not aimed at slowing down mail or doing Trump's bidding to undermine absentee voting, our guest today, Mark Dimondstein, President of the American Postal Workers Union and Postal Service worker since 1983, charges that is exactly what is happening. The new directives purportedly meant as efficiency measures to curb overtime costs, 'can't do anything but slow down mail,' says Dimondstein. 'Our understanding is that it's really happening all over the country, and it needs to be reversed. It needs to be stopped.' The APWU chief, representing more than 200,000 postal workers, charges the new measures, which direct carriers to leave mail behind at sorting stations if waiting for it will delay their route, 'runs counter to our DNA. Our DNA as a postal worker is to serve the customer, leave no mail behind, treat it as if it is our own.'"

The USPS is in crisis mode now, as coronavirus lockdowns have severely curbed regular mail delivery-- though package delivery has increased, he tells me, helping to mitigate that loss somewhat. The Post Office is funded entirely by postage, not tax payer dollars, but its Republican-dominated Board of Governor's, he says, unanimously voted to request a $25 billion emergency bailout from Congress earlier this year. While almost every other company in the nation has received crisis funding during the pandemic, Republicans in Congress and the White House have continued to block the request. "The Post Office does not run on tax dollars in normal times, it runs off the revenue. So if the revenue is not there, then the Post Office will run out of money," Dimondstein warns. "It's not a question of if, it's a question of when."

..."Vote-by-Mail is nothing new for postal workers. We've been doing this for generations. Military personnel have been voting by mail since the days of the Civil War...And of course now, with the pandemic, it's a question of access to the ballot box at all for tens of millions of people who want to vote safely," he tells me, noting ironically that "Trump trusts us to deliver his mail-in ballot!"

..."The idea that the Postal Service is a joke is an insult to every dedicated postal worker. 600,000 plus strong," says Dimondstein. "Out here in this pandemic, on the front lines, can you imagine how we all feel hearing that? And it's an insult to the customers. 91% of the people in this country, in the latest Pew Research Poll [support USPS]. The Postal Service always rates the highest. This year, it was the highest ever, I think out of a deeper appreciation for the role of postal workers in this pandemic."

"The country just laid to rest John Lewis," Dimondstein notes. "His historic role in this country, courageously done, was the question of voting rights for African-Americans in the South of the United States. And it was courageous. He was almost beaten to death. Voting rights now is right here at the epicenter of what's going on right now, and the Post Office is right in the middle of this thing. Because without Vote-by-Mail, people aren't going to be able to vote. It's as simple as that. Tens of millions of people, from seniors to young people, just will not be able to vote during this pandemic if they don't have good access to Vote-by-Mail and don't have the states step up. We have to worry about some of these states that don't want people to vote. That's the reality."

When asked how long before Election Day Dimondstein would advise voters get their absentee ballot into the mail to ensure it arrives n time to be counted, he recommends that if you haven't mailed it by the Tuesday or Wednesday before Election Day, you'd be wise to try and drop it off in person at your precinct or local County headquarters.