> Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems
Yes. That's the point. The administration doesn't care about fixing whatever hypothetical mail ballot fraud may or may not exist; they are doing this to inject chaos into the election results, giving them cover to claim any result they want or even to just throw out the results entirely. Catastrophic problems are the means to that end.
Regardless what anyone thinks about the security of voting in the US. I'd hope that they could see how massively upending multiple states' voting systems 2 months before the midterms is a really bad idea. Even with the best intentions, implementing such a sweeping untested change so rapidly is a horrible idea.
(No, I don't support it regardless, but surely even if you do you could recognize that the timeframe is way too short).
To go beyond the understatement of "bad idea" (and likely make the subtext into text): This thing is unmistakable malice, not mere incompetence.
There's no "oops I didn't know" or "oops I timed the project wrong" or "oops I forgot about the election deadline" or "oops nobody told me about the court-order prohibiting it", etc.
Trump supporters used to speak up on this site. Surely they still exist but all I hear is crickets
There is something incredibly cancerous when a certain party abhors democracy, and does everything they can to undermine the voting rights or access to groups they think won't vote for them.
I would expect most Americans would see this as grotesquely anti-American, and absolutely against the principals of the country. Instead it barely makes news and is just another "get whatever advantage you can" tactic.
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What business is it of the USPS except to transmit all mail regardless of purpose?
The fact that the USPS would notice elections were being conducted is perverse.
I'm wondering how easy the USPS is to route around.
In California's last election, there were 2,758 drop-box locations and 3,546 polling locations. In cities, these are often within walking distance. In rural areas, they might not be so convenient.
So it seems like, at least for returning ballots, any USPS snafus would affect rural voters (which skew Republican) more than urban?
Delivering is another question. I wonder if local governments could drop off ballots if they needed to?
voting by mail is pretty popular these days
https://electionlab.mit.edu/research/voting-mail-and-absente...
more controversy:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/us/mail-in-voting-states....
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/31/us/politics/postal-servic...
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/02/us/politics/postal-servic...
Trump wrecks everything he touches.
Trump sucks but this is more pure GOP bullshit to suppress voting and keep minority power.
They are all working together. Trump has absolutely no respect for voting and is terrified of Democrats getting majorities in the midterms.
Unfortunately they are going to succeed.
good thing it's completely illegal for the federal government to interfere with state voting proceedure
> For instance, the Postal Service has what the whistleblower claims is a "zero percent failure rate."
> Mail workers would scan a sample of a batch of mail ballots — about 400 out of a batch of 10,000 or more — to verify it matches what is in the federal mail ballot portal.
> Under the policy, if even one barcode on a single ballot in the batch doesn't scan properly or the information does not match, the entire batch would be rejected and returned to state election officials so the problem ballot could be addressed, and then the verification process would have to be started again.
This is not the job of the postal service, but of the government. There is zero reason to outsource verification, and the postal service ought to vehemently reject this attempt to shift responsibility. Though I guess they won't, seeing as they are gleichgeschaltet.
You realize USPS is the government right? It’s literally in the Constitution
> USPS is the government
The wrong government! Voter rolls etc. are state responsibilities, not a federal ones.
And please, don't spend a second entertaining any crocodile-tears and pearl-clutching from Republicans about how "maybe states don't have rights and need consistent standards" all of a sudden. Nobody with any good-intentions for reform would wait until right before a major election to do something crazy that could disenfranchise millions.
Ex: "Stop being so mean to Bob, he just wanted to help out with platform stability when he stole that SSH key to push an un-reviewed hotfix to prod while betting the company stock would crash on a gambling site."
They don't care if it's illegal. They'll do it anyway and trust in the tainted result being a fait accompli that the courts can't (or won't) resolve.
> good thing it's completely illegal for the federal government to interfere with state voting proceedure
Oh yeah that'll stop them.
Assuming they check 400 out of 10k, and assuming someone would want to cause any meaningful discrepancies >= 1% of the ballots, meaning 100 problematic ballots per 10k batch.
This system would catch it 98,3% of the time. Pretty good, I'd say.
Ok now what's the potential false positive rate?
1 million ballots at 10,000 per batch means 100 batches. It seems they will use 400 ballots from each batch as a sample, and if anything is wrong for one of those 400 sample ballots, then the entire batch of 10,000 is sent back. Some nefarious actor could find 100 messed up ballots and include one in each sample of 400, and viola! 100 ballots invalidates 1 million votes. That's quite a system they got there.
Maybe I'm stupid, but why would sending back mean invalid?
It gets sent back, it gets investigated and fixed, and back it goes.
Am I missing something?
It's still funny thinking that there's people out there in 2026 who think that "it's illegal" will stop the Trump administration.
That sample is wrong for statistics, 4% is literally not significant. It's also too much for sample controls
No one ever accused this administration of being competent.
maybe so, but it is very vocal about they are the most modest
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The entire state of Oregon has done vote-by-mail for the past ~30 years and it seems to have gone fine for them for decades. Then again, their voting by mail wasn't being challenged by an actively hostile Federal government for much of that time.
I'm not American, but if I'm not mistaken, you don't have election day off like in other countries, right?
If so, how is that not clearly discriminatory for those who can't afford the time to go.
No, Election Day is not a paid holiday, or even a recognized holiday. Public schools are generally out (at least the ones used as voting precints) but folks have work, and typically most "in person" votes are cast after 5pm (after folks traditionally leave work).
Mail in voting has been something that the elderly, infirmed, workers, and folks in the military have done for decades. It's remarkably secure and quite auditable. The issue the right has with it is that the folks that vote by mail (the military notwithstanding) are typically democrats.
> Mail in voting has been something that the elderly, infirmed, workers, and folks in the military have done for decades.
Very common for college students who go to school out of state as well. A conspicuously blue voting bloc.
We have a designated Election Day. It is (as you correctly imply) not a federal holiday. My own perspective is that that is indeed clearly discriminatory, and that some people like it that way.
It is not a paid holiday. It isn't an unpaid holiday either. And if you work a minimum wage job, you probably need to work as many hours as you can. And if you don't show up to work on Tuesday, don't bother showing up on Wednesday because you don't have that job anymore.
This is absolutely discriminatory against the poor. That's why the republicans fight for these types of restrictions and democrats fight against them.
Everywhere I've lived has early voting too. I usually vote a few days before election day because it's not so busy.
It seems to be nearly a third (short read): https://electionlab.mit.edu/research/voting-mail-and-absente...
Then voting needs to be a national holiday with plenty of polling locations.
While I think that making it a national holiday would be a good idea because it would maximize the number of eligible voters, it would still disenfranchise some people. There are jobs that have to be done 24/7/365 (mostly safety jobs), therefor there will be someone who is stuck at work that day. There are people who work at power companies on Christmas Day just to make sure the lights on Christmas trees light up.
I think the best approach is what Georgia has done. No-excuse mail-in for those who want that. And 3 weeks of early voting including Saturdays. And for those who just enjoy standing in lines, there is the official Election Day. If a redneck state can get it done without issues, then we all can do it.
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How much fraud is proven to be occurring due to mail-in ballots?
Statistically 0
Functionally, a literal handful per season which are typically caught and prosecuted.
The right leaning Brookings and Heritage foundations dug into the numbers and found this
"Across the entire country, and utilizing a maximally inclusive estimate, between six and 46 cases of mail voting fraud were identified in each general election"
Table:
Year Total mail voting fraud percentage (out of total mail ballots cast) 2016 0.000089% 2018 0.000024% 2020 0.000051% 2022 0.000010% Average 0.000043%
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/mail-voting-in-the-us-dat...
How much fraud happens because of mail-in or early voting?
That's just fear mongering. Absentee voting by mail has been a thing for centuries. Attempting to limit it to people who are unable to vote in person doesn't do anything to make it more secure, and is a very weak control. It's not like they're going to check up on every single person who claims to have a specific reason they can't get to the polls. Beyond that, no-excuse absentee ballots have been a thing in many states for decades. Three states have been mailing absentee ballots to every voter automatically for a decade or more. Despite this long history, there is no evidence of widespread fraud or other problems resulting from it.
Agreed. I can't even recall any point in my life when an allegation of fraud was made before Trump came on the scene. I've seen requests for recounts when the margins were close, but never an allegation of malicious intent.
Perhaps every state should just have one very well-monitored polling place.
So that the election is decided by the people who live near the one place?
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Over and over and over and over again it has been shown that there is no meaningful voter fraud whatsoever. Stop watching Fox News or as I see below reading yahoo news lol
Saying a thing over and over doesn't make it true. Put differently, a lie repeated often enough is not therefore the truth. If you want to go believe in lies, fine, that is your prerogative. If you want to doubt one source, ten sources, or a thousand, nobody can stop you there either. Nonetheless, the truth will remain.
> Saying a thing over and over doesn't make it true.
Even saying it once doesn't make it true. Apply that to everything you have said.
Amen my white brother. When is senior hour at the buffet? You know how we get in our age
White, black, yellow, red, or brown. 10 or 90. The truth remains.
Your vague handwavey manner of writing sounds very presidential.
It's actually very specific. Look up the previous abuses of the US Postal Inspections Bureau and you will see exactly what I mean and why I've said it the way I've said it.
“It’s very specific”
“Just look up vague abuses that I’m claiming happened with no evidence”
What does that have to do with anything discussed here?
Wait'll you hear about the Comstock Act and what the USPS has done to enforce that.
"Specific" would involve some sort of detail about what these abuses were, or when they happened, or something beyond just "previous abuses of the US Postal Inspections Bureau."
The fun thing about being extremely vague is that it's inherently unsearchable. I can do a search and find reports of USPIS abuses, but I have no idea if they're the ones you're referring to or not, because you didn't say what you were referring to. And I'm not about to spend a bunch of time trying to work out which ones you meant and how they might connect to voting by mail when you can't be bothered to give even the slightest bit of information.
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Then it’s necessary to make voting a federal holiday. Like it is in other countries.
We don't have holidays here, but employers are required to provide us with a certain amount of consecutive free hours (which specific number I can't remember) inside voting hours.
That’s fine, except for places in the US (particularly poor urban areas) where you have to wait in line for hours and hours to vote - it would need to accommodate for that
I don't think there is any federal law. Could be a law in your state.
It isn't just injecting chaos, but instead is trying to engineer an outcome. Find every mechanism and group that is likely to vote against you, and do everything possible to disenfranchise those voters. They've already gotten a ruling that ballots received after a cutoff do not count, regardless of the reason, so now they're engineering assurances that they get to choose from where ballots can be selectively delayed.
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One can observe and accuse based on that observation. What 'sources' do you expect to see?
He’s just demanding the same kind of rigor he demands from Trump about rigged elections. Here you go RickWagoner the Republican Governor of famously liberal Wyoming smells something fishy too: https://www.codyenterprise.com/news/local/article_7f688e37-3...
I’d like to see a real source, not something somebody made up in their head. An article from any reliable news source will suffice.
They’d said as much explicitly and implicitly with their actions.
Source, please.
You're replying to someone's personal interpretation and opinion asking about a source? That is the source. Do you not understand how discussions work?
The fact that reputable sources were not provided to justify the need for fixes has been reputable source enough.
Bullshit is produced for the effect saying it will have.
A good majority of Americans want voter id.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/28/politics/video/the-odds-voter...
So a party calling for voter id is following the will of the people, while politicians opposing the will of the people are justifying the need for a fix, right?
> politicians opposing the will of the people are justifying the need for a fix, right?
That's a funny way of saying that they support the status quo, which has never been provably linked to large-scale voter fraud.
If you want voter ID, here's the procedure: establish evidence showing that its need outweighs its disadvantages, then pass a bill in Congress, then implement the bill. Signing an Executive Order that demands illegal overreach without justification is not the American way.
If they gave a crap about the will of the people then why is marijuana still illegal? When you defy the will of the people 99% of the time, claiming your motivation is the will of the people when it is convenient rings pretty hollow.
You mean where the sitting president said they were going to try to rig the midterms?
> Provide reputable sources, we can discuss it.
His Truth Social account is public. Do we agree that is a reputable source?
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/trum...
The article you’ve provided clearly says Trumps dialogue is not to be taken literally. ( It does say there are other ways the election might be tinkered with, but these are for another discussion. )
I don’t find that article to be particularly worrying.
> I don’t find that article to be particularly worrying.
The issue is not the article, but the president's own words. Do you find it concerning that the president has expressed a desire to cancel elections? Or do you think he was joking?
Follow-up question: was/is he joking about building the wall, mass deportations, eliminating birthright citizenship, or running for a third term?
Project 2025