Roy Exum
Put me down as one who opposes mail-in ballots. History is rife with cases of where people from one state to the next will take advantage of the lure of mail fraud, and – believe this -- counterfeit ballots produced in China look better than the originals. Due to the coronavirus, I can see where there is a legitimate need, but I can also understand President Trump’s panic – all the hens in the chicken house ain’t good layers. What I can’t understand is what’s the roar over the post office.
Why is Nancy Pelosi calling back Congress in special session to squabble about the post office when the solution is so glaringly simple?
Think of this: Every year the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is ready to deliver more than 28 million packages per day between Dec.16-21, and will average 20.5 million packages per day from Nov. 1 through the remainder of the year. With a projected 800 million package deliveries between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, the Postal Service delivers more packages to homes than any of its competitors – United Parcel Service (UPS), Fedex and Amazon. The trick is how they do it.
Anybody who ever sent a box of cigars to Uncle Louie in Stillwater, Texas, knows that there are deadlines to make sure the gift arrives by Dec. 25. The way to assure each vote will be vetted by the county Election Commissions all across America and counted properly is to mail it four or five days before the election, just as you would a Christmas card. Hello? Last year the USPS “retail ground service” deadline (“Uncle Louie’s cigars) was Dec. 15. The first-class deadline (Christmas cards, checks to the grandchildren) and first-class packages up to 15.99 ounces was Dec. 20, with priority mail Dec. 21.
This year’s presidential election is Tuesday, Nov. 3. You can request an absentee ballot from the Hamilton County Election Commission right now and the only stipulation is that it must be received by election day. Any ballot that is not received by election day cannot count. It is that simple. I personally believe the overwhelming majority of voters have already decided how they will vote. If I chose to vote by mail, I’d send in my application today and, when the ballot arrives, I would mail it the next day. That’s how simple this is.
The Post Office is a different story. It is the second-largest employer in our private sector with roughly 470,000 career employees and about 140,000 non-career employees. Its biggest flaw is that no one understands it. Is it a government agency that should be held up to the public’s standards, or is it a quasi-independent agency with its cumbersome union, its grossly-inept leadership that is waist-deep in ludicrous red tape, its aging delivery fleet that is today a money pit, and horrendous overhead.
Not long ago, President Trump placed a ‘bean-counter’, Louis DeJoy, in the Postmaster General’s chair and, intentional or not, DeJoy’s sudden efforts to cut costs have become abysmal. We know that the Internet (email) has cut first-class mail by almost 50 percent what it was 20 yeas ago. We know that the private companies (UPS, Fedex, Amazon) have profited by taking business away from the Post Office, so sweeping reforms are inevitable.
Right now, this according to Wikipedia, there are huge obstacles that must be faced:
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THE RETIREMENT AND PENSION
* -- The Office of Personnel Management is the main bureaucratic organization responsible for the human resources aspect of many federal agencies and their employees. The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 obligates the USPS to fund the present value of earned retirement obligations (essentially past promises which have not yet come due) within a 10-year time span. The PAEA created the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefit Fund after Congress removed the Postal Service contribution to the Civil Service Retirement System. Most other employees that contribute to the CSRS have 7 percent deducted from their wages. Currently all new employees contribute into Federal Employee Retirement System once they become a full-time regular employees.
* -- On Sept. 30, 2014, the USPS failed to make a $5.7 billion payment on this debt, the fourth such default.
* -- On Feb. 5, 2020, the House passed The USPS Fairness Act (H.R. 2382) with 309 ‘Yeas’ and 106 ‘Nays’ meeting the 2/3rd rule. The measure eliminates the requirement going forward and forgives all payments on which USPS has defaulted. It was moved to the Senate on Feb. 10, 2020 and is awaiting action by senators.
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REFORM PROPOSALS
* -- As part of a June 2018 governmental reorganization plan, the Donald Trump administration proposed turning USPS into "a private postal operator" which could save costs through measures like delivering mail fewer days per week, or delivering to central locations instead of door to door. There was strong bipartisan opposition to the idea in Congress.
* -- In April 2020 Congress approved a $10 billion loan from the Treasury to the post office. According to the Washington Post, officials under Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin suggested using the loan as leverage to give the Treasury Department more influence on USPS operations, including making them raise their charges for package deliveries, a change long sought by President Trump.
* -- In May 2020 Louis DeJoy was appointed Postmaster General and immediately began taking measures to reduce costs, such as banning overtime and extra trips to deliver mail. While DeJoy admitted that these measures were causing delays in mail delivery, he said they would eventually improve service.
* -- More than 600 high-speed mail sorting machines were scheduled to be dismantled and removed from postal facilities, raising concerns that mailed ballots for the Nov. 3 election might not reach election offices on time. Mail collection boxes were removed from the streets in many cities; after photos of boxes being removed were spread on social media, a postal service spokesman said they were being moved to higher traffic areas but that the removals would stop until after the election.
* -- The inspector general for the postal service opened an investigation into the recent changes.
* -- On Aug. 16 the House of Representatives was called back from its summer recess to consider a bill rolling back all of the changes.
* -- On Aug. 18 (this was yesterday) after days of heavy criticism, and the day after lawsuits against the Postal Service and DeJoy personally were filed in federal court by several individuals, DeJoy announced that he would roll back all the changes until after the November election. He said he would reinstate overtime hours, roll back service reductions, and halt the removal of mail-sorting machines and collection boxes.
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DEAD PEOPLE ARE STILL ELIGIBLE VOTERS
This from RealClearPolitics.com …
“Los Angeles County has too many voters. An estimated 1.6 million, according to the latest calculations – which is roughly the population of Philadelphia. That’s the difference between the number of people on the county’s voter rolls and the actual number of voting age residents.
“This means that L.A. is in violation of federal law, which seeks to limit fraud by requiring basic voter list maintenance to make sure that people who have died, moved, or are otherwise ineligible to vote aren’t still on the rolls. Los Angeles County has made only minimal efforts to clean up its voter rolls for decades. It began sending notices to those 1.6 million people last month to settle a lawsuit brought by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch.
“Los Angeles County may be California’s worst offender, but 10 of the state’s 58 counties also have registration rates exceeding 100 percent of the voting age population. In fact, the voter registration rate for the entire state of California is 101 percent. Eight states, as well as the District of Columbia, have total voter registration tallies exceeding 100 percent, and in total, 38 states have counties where voter registration rates exceed 100 percent. Another state that stands out is Kentucky, where the voter registration rate in 48 of its 120 counties exceeded 100 percent last year. About 15 percent of America’s counties where there is reliable voter data – that is, over 400 counties out of 2,800 – have voter registration rates over 100 percent.
“This echoes a 2012 Pew study that found that 24 million voter registrations in the United States, about one out of every eight, are “no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate” – a number greater than the current population of Florida or New York state.
“Pew’s total included at least 1.8 million dead people and another 2.75 million Americans who were registered to vote in at least two states.”
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DEAD PEOPLE GOT $1.4 BILLION IN STIMULUS CHECKS
From TheHill.com (6-25-2020)—
“The Treasury Department and IRS sent almost 1.1 million coronavirus stimulus payments, totaling almost $1.4 billion, to dead people as of April 30, a Government Accountability Office paper released Thursday reported.
"Treasury and IRS did not use the death records to stop payments to deceased individuals for the first three batches of payments because of the legal interpretation under which IRS was operating," GAO said. The watchdog was provided the figure about the number and dollar amount of payments sent to dead people by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.
“The payments sent to deceased individuals are small when compared to the overall number of payments made. Treasury and the IRS have distributed about 160 million payments totaling nearly $270 billion as of May 31, according to the GAO report.”