Yeah, I don't see a reason not to require mail-in ballots (which everyone should be allowed to utilize) to be postmarked a week prior to election day (or some other +/- timeframe). If you are proactive enough to consider mailing in your vote, you've also probably been proactive by having already determined who you are going to vote for.

Edit: it’s a bit like in-person early voting in Texas. Early voting stops around a week before the election, so if you can’t make up your mind by mid October, you’ll just need to vote on Election Day with the rest of the peons.

(08-23-2020 03:37 PM)westsidewolf1989 Wrote:  Yeah, I don't see a reason not to require mail-in ballots (which everyone should be allowed to utilize) to be postmarked a week prior to election day (or some other +/- timeframe). If you are proactive enough to consider mailing in your vote, you've also probably been proactive by having already determined who you are going to vote for.

Edit: it’s a bit like in-person early voting in Texas. Early voting stops around a week before the election, so if you can’t make up your mind by mid October, you’ll just need to vote on Election Day with the rest of the peons.

EXACTLY like early voting, which I usually do and intend to do again this year. The uproar by the Democrats on this matter is calculated to spread fear and innuendo and to set the stage for more conspiracy theory action should the democrats lose.

Both parties send people to nursing homes to "help" the old folks fill out their votes. My sister is warning people at her place to check the ballots before signing them, and to make sure their ballots are included in the mail, even if they have to take them to the box themselves.

Early voting by personal appearance for the November 3, 2020 Election begins on October 13, 2020 and ends on October 30, 2020.

In my county, the sole early voting place is across the street from the Post Office.

(08-23-2020 03:14 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  

(08-22-2020 10:44 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  Ham, I’ve noticed you have a bit of a Bad habit of responding to links without going to them or watching the video. It happened recently with the ad for the women running in Baltimore, and here.

And you have a bit of a bad habit of ignoring the important things and focusing on the meaningless.

Regarding Baltimore, as I've told you repeatedly... I can't get twitter or a few other sources on my computer. In order to work remotely, I've had to install some 'blockers'.

I asked for the source information.... and the reason I asked for the source information was that I wanted to see what ELSE they showed. People telling stories usually show the parts they want you to see, and not the other parts... and this is no different. The data presented by AE... 3 of the 4 charts (going from memory, it may be 4 of 5) have nothing to do with the sort of mail we're talking about... and even the one that does, only deals with a portion of that mail.

MORE IMPORTANTLY, you have not remotely demonstrated causation.... and certainly not 'an impact on the election'.

Seriously Lad, if Trump and Republicans are so bad... why do I have to accept such insanely weak evidence in order to prove it?

Maybe I'm misremembering the back and forths, but I thought there was a question as to whether or not there was even a delay in mail. See post #64 from you:

Quote:Perhaps you can provide evidence of these claims of slow mail from someone other than the President of the Postal Workers Union.
I know it's a big ask, but perhaps you can provide some actual data to support the claim?

Or your post from #113:

Quote:So even IF mail is slowing (which I still need to see... but let's assume it IS happening)

I'm not personally making the argument that these graphs from the USPS explicitly show causation, because that's too difficult to do with a single graph. I was arguing that they clearly show a decline in mail delivery speed over the past few weeks.

Quote:

Quote:All the info you’re interested in can be found here (https://postalpro.usps.com/node/8472) for the Pacific region. That includes change (and decrease) in first class, marketing, and periodicals. All of which say a drop in percent on time around the end of June (marketing being the most noticeable).

Looks like a precipitous drop beginning July 4th.... similar to one back in 11/30 for letters, but not periodicals or marketing. I find that telling and you ignore it.

Woh, let's not cast stones and aspersions. You're in Tanq territory when you tell someone they ignored data.

This is why I said I'm not using these graphs alone to try and argue causation.

But let's dig deeper. We see a drop of almost 10% for first class letters back in Nov/Dec 2020, but not in any of the other deliveries (marketing or periodicals). That trend actually matches what was observed the previous year (SPLY), so that might tell us that this is a seasonal issue (which makes sense given the increase in letters sent around the holidays).

The fact that the only time we really see all three of these mail types diverge downward from the previous year has been during the past few weeks. That tells me there is clear evidence of a slow down of mail across the board that is abnormal.

Quote:

Quote:I think this squarely puts the nail in the coffin of the idea that mail delivery hasn’t slowed across the board. Turns out all of the reporting we’re seeing from across the country, from multiple sources, isn’t all fake news...

Lad... Please pay attention.... You're a smart guy, so I'm investing my time to try and have this conversation. If you're not going to pay attention, I'm not going to continue to waste my time.

NOBODY said it hasn't slowed. I certainly never did. I simply asked for factual information rather than anecdotes. And here is why:

They had exactly the same drop in 1st class letters/flats composite before December, and the other two categories show no impact at the same time. Why do you think that happened?
It certainly wasn't because of a loss of sorters.

If the post office is asked to send out 100mm ballots, then depending on how they do it, delivery will be somewhat slower. We have 3 months to get ballots to people, so who cares? They take 4 days rather than 3 to get to people who now have 79 days rather than 80 (or whatever it is) to send them in.

Could it also be the 'Political and Election Mail Growth' between 2016 and 2020....567m to 842m?? I sure hope we haven't sent out 300mm ballots.

You've shown a very small slowdown in one area... there may be others, but we agree that here had been a modest slowdown in the west. By modest I'm talking about the time delay, which is in WE's charts, but not yours. It's a day. What you haven't demonstrated is that this slowdown has anything to do with a reduction in sorting machines, is politically motivated, or could potentially impact the election. THOSE are the things that matter, not this.

Kindly respond to the key portions of the 'about us' links on the USPS site that I mentioned.
1) sorters are currently operating at about 1/3 of their capacity, meaning there is ample machine hours to manage a volume bump... yet despite this, we still have delays when volumes spike. Maybe its something other than the sorting machines?

2) that this guy didn't initiate the review nor the removal... so whatever was decided, at least MOSTLY predates him.

3) that even with the slowdown, there is no evidence that people will not be able to cast their votes/have them counted.

So your complaint seems to be that this guy... who started only on 6/15.... and runs USPS, not the vote I might add... didn't step in in his first 18 days and stop what his predecessor put in motion until August... and that states and voters are too stupid to figure out how to manage a potential slowdown in deliveries (which based on Christmas, can happen with or without a reduction in sorters... though also based on Christmas, doesn't have to impact all areas of delivery)...

If 100mm people are going to vote by mail, the probability of delays in mail delivery as a result of that bump is 100%. Whether it's a delay of 30mm votes or 60mm votes (because of the loss of a few machines) makes no difference. If its a delay of 1mm votes, it still needs to be addressed.... but that doesn't mean that you need to address it by being able to deliver 100mm additional pieces of mail 'every day'. You address it by setting up something 'different'.

Here are the possible solutions
1) people: mail your ballot back early.
2) states: add additional delivery or collection resources and not depend 100% on an entity not designed to manage it.
3) feds: I don't support this, but I wouldn't make too big a deal about it... send money to the states to help with the above... This wouldn't be a lot of money.
4) political parties/candidates: tell your voters to get their votes back early and not wait.
5) USPS: prioritize ballots risking delays to other letters instead.

Your solution is apparently to make sure USPS has the ability to process 100mm ballots in a single day... which includes not only sorters, but additional trucks to carry them and additional mail carriers to carry them. I'm sure there are other things I'm missing.

Here's the meaningless thing to do...
Complain about a 13% reduction in capacity that is already 65% over the regular need... and claim that it is politically motivated without actually providing any real evidence of it other than 'the other guys suck'.

My comments about Dejoy have been focused on the timing of the machine and box removals. That, and me advocating for keeping the USPS as a service are the two focuses of my posts in this thread.

Just look at post #72 oe #76 if you don't believe me...

So unless the decision by any Postmaster General to remove 13% of the sorting machine capacity was made prior to say, March, my comment still stands. It seems like the timing of removal (during a pandemic and immediately prior to a national election) is a bad time to try and experiment with a greater removal of machines than we have in recent history.

I had a longer response but I'm going to boil it down to simple comments.

If your only point is that you think it's bad timing... Okay... Please point out to those Democrats claiming its political to blame the outgoing Democrat who didn't stop it between March and 6/15 AT LEAST as much as they're blaming the Republican who didn't stop it between 6/15 and 6/30. They seem to think that its a lot more than 'bad timing'. I said this many posts ago. If that's your only point, then why are you still responding?

My points are
1) sorting is only one of many pieces of delivery times. You've decided that 'this' is the cause, and you don't seem to care to actually investigate it. You seem indignant that I've repeatedly asked for the data to look into it.

2) this delay seems different from traditional 'excess volume' delays in that it is impacting everything and not just letters as it does at Christmas. That makes me suspect its something other than just 'volume'. It seems to me that with sorters generally working at 35% of their capacity, that unless all of the trucks and employees are also generally working at 35% of their capacity, that the likely bottleneck is elsewhere. What other component has 65% slack in it? Does it really not seem likely to you?

3) the delay also seems to be very date specific. I don't know, but I'd strongly suspect that the removal of equipment would be a process and not a date... so you'd expect to see a slow rise in delivery times. Instead we have more of a cliff...

4) though a cliff, it's a very shallow one. The difference at D+1 is <0.5%. So now the question becomes... what difference does it make to your claim regarding timing?

The problem clearly isn't getting 150+mm ballots delivered prior to election day. We have months. The problem is getting them collected and back to the states.

It seems that Christmas history suggests whether we have 4,000 sorters or 3,500 sorters, there is going to be a slow down in the delivery times surrounding this single date.... so while it might be 15% at D+1 with 3,500 machines rather than 7% at D+1 with 4000 machines (that presumes that I just accept your premise) ... what difference does it make? You STILL need to adjust the deadlines or find some other way to make sure that ALL ballots are counted.

How about we simply have people do their own sorting? If you're dropping it off, you do it like many places do on tax day where certain boxes are for 'ballots only'... no sorting required... and drivers can do the same. They can pull out the ballots when they pick up most mail. Even if they only get 50% of them, the burden on sorting machines is now half of what it would have been... since all of these ballots are only going to a few destinations.

And of course, set the mail-in deadline such that the D+'X' number is zero. If models tell you its going to be 5 days, then set the deadline at 7, or 10, or 14. If you set it instead at 5 days, you're just asking for trouble.

This is as I suggested the problem of creating these 'quasi' government entities. The government starts making non-economic decisions for a company with more than a decade of operating losses and failures to fund pensions.

Why don't they just mandate that the USPS employ 5mm more people to manipulate the employment numbers?

Quote:GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — A KREX 5/Fox 4 viewer noticed something interesting being thrown out at a local United States Postal Service Distribution Center Friday.

That viewer says she went to the USPS sorting annex on Patterson Road and Burkey Street Monday morning when she noticed a red dumpster by the loading docks.

When that person asked the clerk what was being thrown out, the clerk said its a brand new mail sorting machine.

The clerk added, “it took two months to set up and they were just about to do a test run when the postmaster general ordered us to take it out, now we’re sorting by hand. No wonder they say we’re losing money when they throw out expensive machines like that.”

https://www.westernslopenow.com/news/loc...hrown-out/

Quote:Earlier this month, as Postmaster General Louis DeJoy instituted cutbacks in USPS operations (which he later reversed), and Donald Trump bragged that he was resisting congressional funding efforts in order to throttle mail-in voting around the country, these moves substantially strengthened the hand of lawyers seeking to change the rules. Wendy Weiser, an election-law expert at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, told me that “the postal service has essentially proved the case, by saying that the postal service does not believe it can provide service that will enable votes cast under the state’s rules to be counted. I can’t think of any kind of stronger factual showing that people are going to be unconstitutionally” deprived of the right to vote.

The issue of the postmark can be hugely consequential. In Wisconsin’s April primary, about 79,000 ballots arrived after election day. Because Wisconsin is a “receive by election day” state, these votes were counted only due to the intervention of a federal judge. In Michigan’s August primary, 6,400 ballots were postmarked by election day but were not counted because they weren’t received in time. Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s secretary of state, told me she expects those numbers to more than double in November. That’s a relatively small percentage of the roughly 3 million anticipated votes in Michigan this fall, but a large enough number to potentially determine the outcome in a state carried by Trump in 2016 by only 10,704 votes, and where Republicans and Democrats are hotly contesting both Senate and House seats.

It may seem like a small thing to ask voters to get their ballots in on time, especially as state election officials, both parties, and the media lavish so much attention on the topic. But the current state of confusion and uncertainty is not surprising. The vast majority of voters are expected to use mail balloting for the first time and may not fully appreciate the time required to request, receive, and return ballots. And the challenge is only aggravated by the welter of rules around the country on mail balloting: some states require mail votes to arrive by election day, others count votes if they are postmarked by election day but arrive within three days after the election, and others give seven days or even more. But perhaps most importantly, many voters—and election officials—are just beginning to grapple with the impact of the degradation of postal service standards in an era of budget cuts and coronavirus limitations. In extraordinary letters sent in July, Tom Marshall, the general counsel and executive vice president of the United States Postal Service, wrote to the top election officials in 46 states advising them that they need to take into account the declining efficiency of mail delivery. Marshall, for instance, advised Benson that in Michigan, “there is a significant risk that, at least in certain circumstances, ballots may be requested in a manner that is consistent with your election rules and returned promptly, and yet not be returned in time to be counted.” In other words, voters could still be screwed even If they do everything right.

Which is the point, of course.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/08/...0-election