Ballot Rejections Have Soared in Rural Counties as USPS Reduces Mail Service
propublica.org
propublica.org
Once you figure that out, it makes sorting the mail real quick. Never has standard ever been important, even if it comes from a company that I do business with.
But for the life of me, I have not been able to figure out the price of a Standard stamp. USPS sells stamps online, but you'd think it would be easier to find the price, but still I can't find it. I would love to know how much is spent on mail that no one really cares about.
Either way, it’s not in USPS’ hands since Congress would have to change that requirement.
Local deliveries used to be overnight; now they take up to a week. Transnational deliveries can take months.
I hope the primary effect of this will be that millions of MAGA votes go uncounted this year and in 2028, because they're the ones that voted for this in the first place.
This will clearly hurt them in statewide elections, but I wonder how it plays out in local rural elections. I can imagine the rejected ballots leaning more blue than average in heavily red areas.
I can also imagine the opposite: Older folks have less mobility on average, and are probably more likely to mail the ballots in. The Propublica article doesn't say anything about this, but I imagine some election officials track it.
Their ID requirements in Ohio blew back a similar way a few years ago. They made it extremely hard to vote without a driver's license, thinking it'd hit college kids, but it mostly hit retirees that no longer drive.
I just voted early in Ohio a few days ago and that same list is hanging from the wall, no drivers license needed
https://www.savethepostoffice.com/rto-n2024-1/
It's so frustrating. If I want to mail something out, it sits for over a day in the local post office. Even Priority Mail Express can no longer get something out locally overnight. If I need overnight service, I have to drive a significant distance to get to a UPS station to get something into the network.
If something mis-sorts to the wrong post office, it sits for over a day at that remote post office before it can re-enter the stream.
I have had more and more late and missorted packages that compound the late deliveries and all I want to do is cry that I can't get the mail anymore in a reasonable fashion.
Ditto public schools, roads, phones, and broadband (sorta).
Mass social engineering 101
* https://www.propublica.org/article/mail-ballot-delays-postal...
1: show up at polling location, either on voting day or within the early voting period.
2: show ID to poll worker who verifies it and hands over the ballots for the elections in which you have the right to vote
3: fill in the ballots, put them in the envelope(s) and hand these over to a poll worker
4: poll worker checks again whether you have voting rights for the specific elections and drops the envelopes into the correct voting urns
Done. No postal service involved. You can vote at any (early) voting location for national elections, for local ones you'll need to go to a local voting location where the required ballots are available. Early voting can start a few weeks before election day so nearly everyone should have the possibility to set aside half an hour to an hour to do their civic duty.
That leaves those who really can't make it to the polls. For these people there can be a verified postal ballot system, i.e. they get one sent home on request, fill it out and send it back in the required envelopes. Voting by mail always adds risks but since it would only be needed for a small fraction of the voters that risk is manageable. Mail-in votes need to be counted on election day so they need to be in the mail about a week before election day. Why you ask? Because the fraud risk of mail-in ballots makes it all too easy to use them to add enough votes to push a close race towards a specific candidate. Count them early on election day and publish the results, these need to be final results, before the rest of the votes are counted. There's plenty of countries where votes are counted this way, this is not rocket science. I have voting rights in 2 different countries in northern and western Europe, both use something resembling this scheme. Everyone shows his or her ID either to get the ballots or to have them deposited in the voting urns, this has never been contested and the mere thought of voting without ID is so clearly outrageously silly that nobody brings it up. All the arguments against showing ID have been proven to be specious at best, you need ID to do just about anything related to the government so insisting on voting without it only serves to undermine trust in elections.
Those countries have robust and long establish national ID systems, and they do go a good job of making sure citizens easily obtain their ID.
The US has no such system.
There are millions of adult citizens without valid government issues photo ID acceptable and who cannot reasonably afford to get it. Before you say that states offer free ID, it is not the cost of the ID itself that is the issue. It is the cost of getting supporting documents.
Often getting copies of the supporting documents requires showing ID. Oops. There are alternate procedures, which often involve hard to find documents, often not digitized or centralized.
The only way to do a voter ID system in the US without disenfranchising a large number of voters is to establish a system similar to other countries with a national ID that is easy for every citizen to obtain and we grandfather in existing citizens by making the new system only required for people who are born after it is instituted.
To use Sweden as an example, there is no need for supporting documents. When a person here want a passport or national ID, and they don't already have a valid id, all they need is someone else with an valid ID to sign the paper. It can be a coworker, a teacher, a relative, or basically anyone with some form of relation to the person. The same apply for voting, so someone can go and vote as long they have a second person with an ID willing to sign that they are who they claim to be. Not a single paper required and all they need to do is say their name and date of birth.
No birth recipient, no electrical bill, no tax receipt, no money, nor any other paper which is honestly a less secure system that simply having already identified person signing a legally binding paper.
1) Driver's license, even expired if expired within the last 2 years
2) State Non-Driver's ID
3) Out of state Driver's License
4) Passport
5) Free Voter ID
6) College / University ID
7) School employee ID
Additionally all the following are valid, without any limitations on expiration as long as they are photo IDs:
1) Military / veterans ID
2) Tribal enrollment ID for Native tribes
3) Any other photo ID issued by any federal or the state's government agencies
In addition to all of that, if you still are unable to produce an ID, you can still vote with a "provisional ballot" and sign an affidavit declaring your inability to obtain an ID. All of the following are valid reasons:
1) Lack of transportation
2) Disability or illness
3) Lack of supporting documentation to obtain an ID (birth certificates etc)
4) Work or school schedule
5) Family responsibilities
6) A lost, stolen or misplaced ID
7) Applied for an ID but haven't received it
8) Other impediment (write in)
9) Religious objection to being photographed
10) Victim of a declared natural disaster within 100 days of the election
All provisional ballots must be counted before the state can certify the vote count and a provisional ballot can only be rejected by unanimous vote of the board of elections commission that the ID exception form was filled out falsely.
That seems a pretty reasonable system to me given how it's pretty much impossible to interact with the state, the federal government, banks or employers without a photo ID these days.
For example there are people for whom a birth certificate was issued, but they don't know where it was issued (e.g., their parents were migrant laborers and they don't know what county or even what state the parents where in when their Mom gave birth). At some non-trivial expense they could probably track it down, but getting a certified copy requires ID that they do not have, so they first have to bootstrap using the alternate procedure for getting the birth certificate without ID. That in turn often involves tracking down various scattered records from long ago and maybe getting affidavits from people who knew you as a child.
If your state won't let you use #3 until you've gone to the time and expense to go through all that and still failed to get the birth certificate I'd say that is not reasonable.
If they will, great.
> That seems a pretty reasonable system to me given how it's pretty much impossible to interact with the state, the federal government, banks or employers without a photo ID these days.
You'd probably be surprised at the number of people who are living a cash only life and work in jobs that are off the record. (Many things you might think impossible for such people are possible if they have a friend or relative who act as in intermediary with some non-cash service they need).
You're not even wrong.
I worked as a poll judge for a long time. I know a little bit about election administration.
Most every jurisdiction has required ID for a very long time. And the exceptions prove the rule. (IIRC, North Dakota?)
I also strenuously objected to closing the local polling sites in my county and state. (We activists were only able to delay it 2 years. Mostly by exposing lies of vendors and their lackeys.)
One of the (many) reasons was the long term decline of USPS, mostly caused by the decades long revanchist campaign to dismantle it, to further undermine our democracy.
Sadly, we were proven right.
Somehow folks who call for voter ID laws seem to also be opposed to making getting a photo ID free and easy
-1. Give everyone an ID. Actually give them one and don't just pretend to do it.
it's a constitutional right, not something you should have to jump through hoops
people don't have the time to take off work and not get paid and wait in line for hours which is exactly what many places do now by reducing voting location radically
many people can't even afford a car these days or to fill it with gas
if you insist on in person voting, make it a paid day off
the ID thing is a false narrative, it's not ID that's the problem, it's that it costs money to get the ID and now they want your birth certificate saying the ID doesn't even prove you are a citizen with "realID"
Buying a gun, free speech, right to assembly. Each with caveats.
Appearing in front of your fellow citizens as a breathing person is central to how voting has worked for hundreds of years.
Why change it?
I agree it should be paid day off.
But those same people who don't want their first and second amendment rights to be infringed are okay with voting having high friction so a lot of people can't do it.
Standing inline with your neighbors to exercise our vote is empowering. It reminds us of our status as voters. As equals. It crosses boundaries. It's beautiful.
Sure there's cases where appearing in person isn't practical and I'm not suggesting we close the door to that. But I think it should be needs based.
There simply is no meaningful intentional voter fraud in the US.
In an even more online and disconnected world, it forces us out of our homes to stand with our neighbors in an exercise of our power.
There's a beauty to this that, when a large amount of voting is done over mail, I feel is lost.
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-24/
> The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.
Any states requiring a particular kind of ID for voting have to make a suitable ID available for free, they cannot charge for it or it becomes a de facto poll tax. That means that while they may accept a driver's license or passport (which cost, at least in every state I know of DLs aren't free), they also have to have some suitable free ID (other than the time to obtain it). But even the time to obtain an ID can become subject to lawsuits against states if they try to play games with it like closing down DMV locations or cutting down on operating hours to make it harder for people to obtain the necessary ID.
It's a database query to generate a list of eligible voters and where they can vote. Literally.
Bonus points for maintaining 50+ heterogeneous legally separated voter registration databases. Thereby maximizing the likelihood of errors. Plus every VRDB has one or more teams of saboteurs; purging eligible voters, monkey wrenching, and sowing FUD.
...it's almost as if the there's some far reaching, widespread campaign to disenfranchise voters.
I’m working as a poll worker for the current US election, and I can’t see how you would do it. We don’t check ID.