And the post office manages to send every one of those millions and millions of Christmas cards, and holiday cards, and then more cards from people who forgot to send their Christmas cards.
SO I looked it up, listen to this. Turns out, every holiday season--I mean December, not counting Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day, but JUST December: Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanzaa-- people in the US send out what’s estimated to be two billion holiday cars.
TWO BILLION.
Now suddenly, they’re worried that if each person over 18 who is registered to vote sends ONE piece of mail, the system will be overwhelmed. What?
There are about 146 million registered voters in the US. THIRTEEN POINT SIX times MORE holiday cards are sent than that! And that’s if EVERYONE voted.
And it’s not like people are all going to send their ballots on the same day, right? You can send them when you get them.
This whole charade is the scariest thing I’ve ever heard. I am terrified at the brazen and cynical manipulation of the post office to cause voter suppression. And no one is even pretending that’s not happening!
I revere the post office. I cannot live without the post office--I am not exaggerating, the job of a writer/author requires the post office. My post office pals know me, and care about me, and about every other person who they help. But it’s not only about me and my little books, of course. This is--this is democracy being destroyed.
AND. The answer is not to say--oh, the election can’t work. A smart wise honorable honest good person would know the answer is to stop the selfish and megalomaniacal fear-mongering and to find a way to make it work.
Which ain't that tough, people. Pretend it’s the holiday season. Fund the post office. There’s a lot more than holiday greetings at stake.
RHYS BOWEN : I don’t know how any elected official can do nothing while a dictator seeks to rig an election. Where are their consciences? The current postmaster general is a major shareholder in other delivery services. None of these men ( and I say men because there are no women on the USPS board) care if a pensioner doesn’t get her social security check or vital medications. Or that people can’t vote. But you know what? This may just tip the scales in favor of justice and decency!
HALLIE EPHRON: I certainly hope so, Rhys - And Hank, I love your reminder of all those Christmas cards. Puts things in perspective.
Honestly when I first saw ‘postal slowdown’ reported, I tuned it out as just another sideshow. Then I saw that the Postal Service has been documented unbolting and hauling away mailboxes Oregon, Montana, Manhattan and Pennsylvania. Now it turns out they are yanking high-speed sorting machines from processing plants.
Surely, I thought, if all this were true, Congress would step up, because this has got to damage politicians on both sides of the political spectrum. Why doesn’t somebody DO SOMETHING? If there’s anything we’ve learned, it’s that it’s a whole lot easier to dismantle infrastructure than it is to fix it, or create one that works.
JENN McKINLAY: I love mail. LOVE it! It breaks up the monotony of my day, sitting at my computer, staring into the void trying to weave stories. I love my postal carrier, especially after he forgave the Hooligans for trying to take him out with water balloons (Ah!). I also love my local post office. I’ve chatted with these same folks every week for years. Affection aside, the mail brings my husband’s life saving meds and my paychecks. The thought of anyone willfully destroying something on which so many people rely makes me a bit crazed.
As for the voting component to this, AZ doesn’t do a lot right, but we’ve had mail in ballots for YEARS. 80% of AZ votes by mail and we’ve had no problems. Being a swing state, we’d know if we did. It’s a seamless process of requesting a ballot through the DMV. It comes early, you fill it out, no stamps needed, and mail it back. It’s under camera surveillance as soon as it lands at the recorder’s office. They check your signature on the envelope against the one on file at the DMV and if there’s a discrepancy, they call you to verbally confirm it’s your ballot. You check online to see that your ballot has arrived and been counted. It really can’t get any simpler or more secure.
LUCY BURDETTE: Agree with all that’s been said. In Florida we always receive mail-in ballots, which we can use or not, as we choose. Like Arizona, there are a lot of problems in our state, but mail-in ballots work. I just finished emailing my senators to ask them to step up on this, and I hope you’ll do the same. Here’s the website to find your senators:
https://www.senate.gov/
And here’s the one for the House:
https://www.house.gov/
DEBORAH CROMBIE: I am SO jealous of those of you who have no-excuse mail in voting. Texas does NOT. In 2016 I had to vote absentee because I was in London, and it was a huge pain. It was a very tight time limit and had to be postmarked outside the US. I had missed early voting by one day and had to mail my ballot the day I arrived in the UK. Who knows if it got counted? Texas does not track or notify you. Maybe my ONE vote would have made a difference! (Not in Texas, unfortunately…)
Now that I can vote by mail (over 65) I've requested a ballot, but I'm worried. What if it goes astray? I LOVE mail, I love our letter carrier, who delivers so efficiently and looks after everyone in the neighborhood. I hate thinking of Mark having his job made harder, his overtime cut. Sabotaging the post office is just...criminal.
JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Chiming in late, I can also do a news update - as many of you will have read, the new Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, has pledged to "suspend changes" until after the election. Unfortunately, there's no information anywhere to indicate the changes already made - narrowing overtime qualifications and the removal of an unknown number of postal boxes and hundreds of mail sorting machines, some of which have already been destroyed.
In my household in rural Maine, where the USPS serves all our widely scattered communities, we're feeling the pinch. The Maine Millennial (who you may recall was RIFed about a month into the shutdown) runs an Ebay store which is providing half her monthly income. She's been hearing from her customers that shipments to them are being delayed, sometimes for a week or more. The USPS has long been the lifeline for small businesses and self-employed people - unlike FedEx and UPS, every tiny town has a Post Office, and the prices are often better than those at the private companies.
There are many reasons the Founding Fathers placed the Postal Service in the Constitution. Let's not screw up their vision for our country.
HANK: Perfectly put, as always, Debs. Reds and readers. what do you think?
As for the voting component to this, AZ doesn’t do a lot right, but we’ve had mail in ballots for YEARS. 80% of AZ votes by mail and we’ve had no problems. Being a swing state, we’d know if we did. It’s a seamless process of requesting a ballot through the DMV. It comes early, you fill it out, no stamps needed, and mail it back. It’s under camera surveillance as soon as it lands at the recorder’s office. They check your signature on the envelope against the one on file at the DMV and if there’s a discrepancy, they call you to verbally confirm it’s your ballot. You check online to see that your ballot has arrived and been counted. It really can’t get any simpler or more secure.
LUCY BURDETTE: Agree with all that’s been said. In Florida we always receive mail-in ballots, which we can use or not, as we choose. Like Arizona, there are a lot of problems in our state, but mail-in ballots work. I just finished emailing my senators to ask them to step up on this, and I hope you’ll do the same. Here’s the website to find your senators:
https://www.senate.gov/
And here’s the one for the House:
https://www.house.gov/
DEBORAH CROMBIE: I am SO jealous of those of you who have no-excuse mail in voting. Texas does NOT. In 2016 I had to vote absentee because I was in London, and it was a huge pain. It was a very tight time limit and had to be postmarked outside the US. I had missed early voting by one day and had to mail my ballot the day I arrived in the UK. Who knows if it got counted? Texas does not track or notify you. Maybe my ONE vote would have made a difference! (Not in Texas, unfortunately…)
Now that I can vote by mail (over 65) I've requested a ballot, but I'm worried. What if it goes astray? I LOVE mail, I love our letter carrier, who delivers so efficiently and looks after everyone in the neighborhood. I hate thinking of Mark having his job made harder, his overtime cut. Sabotaging the post office is just...criminal.
JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Chiming in late, I can also do a news update - as many of you will have read, the new Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, has pledged to "suspend changes" until after the election. Unfortunately, there's no information anywhere to indicate the changes already made - narrowing overtime qualifications and the removal of an unknown number of postal boxes and hundreds of mail sorting machines, some of which have already been destroyed.
In my household in rural Maine, where the USPS serves all our widely scattered communities, we're feeling the pinch. The Maine Millennial (who you may recall was RIFed about a month into the shutdown) runs an Ebay store which is providing half her monthly income. She's been hearing from her customers that shipments to them are being delayed, sometimes for a week or more. The USPS has long been the lifeline for small businesses and self-employed people - unlike FedEx and UPS, every tiny town has a Post Office, and the prices are often better than those at the private companies.
There are many reasons the Founding Fathers placed the Postal Service in the Constitution. Let's not screw up their vision for our country.
HANK: Perfectly put, as always, Debs. Reds and readers. what do you think?
