
Postal Service Warns Mail-In Ballots in 46 States May Not Be Delivered in Time - djaque
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2020/08/14/postal-service-usps-warns-mail-in-ballots-in-46-states-may-not-be-delivered-in-time-election/#447400d817e6
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kanobo
I know there are studies that suggest elections tend to favor Republicans when
voting becomes more restrictive but my intuition is that in this unique case
this is just as devastating to Republicans as Democrats since older folks are
not going to stand in line during a pandemic. I see this as a completely
idiotic move by the executive branch. Or am I misunderstanding something
obvious?

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IvyMike
May the goal isn't so much to win as to undermine the very legitimacy of the
election.

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kanobo
Oh right, I can't believe that didn't cross my mind. I also sad that I now
live in a country where I have to worry about that.

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jrjrjrjr
donnie deported to gitmo.

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odomojuli
Am I reading this right? They're talking about potentially disenfranchising
almost half the population of the US?

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fallingfrog
Yes that is correct. They won’t feel bad about it either.

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spo81rty
I'm still trying to figure out why we don't vote via smart phones. Surely
there had to be some country in the world doing this?

Vote, take a selfie, photo of an ID and submit or something. Can't be that
difficult.

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RileyJames
From the outside (non-American) I struggle to understand how Trump doesn’t get
blamed for this issue he’s making such a fuss about.

Trump is President. He appointed the Postmaster General. He, and his appointee
are responsible for the post office.

He could have spent the past 4 years fixing this problem, building the best
postal voting system in the world.

He could have spent the past few months (since he brought up the issue) fixing
what he saw as the issues. Getting mail delivery up to scratch. Funding the
post office effectively, hiring more staff, fixing the ‘arrived too late
deadlines’, what ever it takes, in the name of ‘make America great’.

But he’s done the opposite at every opportunity, and continued his temper
tantrum about the problem.

Who is this guy?!? If you’re not up to the task of doing the job, “you’re
fired” (it’s his bloody catch line). There is no one else to blame. You are
the top dog, you have all the power and control you could ever want or need.

I can see how other issues get bogged down in politics and personal opinions.
But this one? If the election is a shambles, it happened on YOUR watch. Under
YOUR post master general. Running YOUR post office.

I’d be interested to hear how and why this is seen differently, and what
opinions are on the ground in the states.

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newen
In America, presidents are seen more as king figures than elected officials
who are accountable for their actions and can be dismissed easily if they
don’t do their jobs like prime ministers are in parliamentary democracies.

One person essentially has sole control of the executive part of the
government and the military. It is also very difficult to remove the president
from office and essentially impossible unless he does something provably
illegal.

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perl4ever
>It is also very difficult to remove the president from office and essentially
impossible unless he does something provably illegal.

I don't think that is a meaningful sentence. You can say it's "essentially
impossible" because apparently nothing will sway Republicans to vote for
removal from office recently. But if they _could_ be convinced, then any
pretext would suffice.

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solarkraft
Ah, damn. Nobody could have seen this coming.

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munsters
Posts like these really belong on reddit and not HN.

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gumby
Could you expand?

If it’s “will lead to flames and reddit is happy with that, HN, not so much”,
sure.

If there’s another possibility I’d like to learn it. These days I think my
flame barrier drops down before I can think of other things :-(

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munsters
From the HackerNews Guidelines:

What not to post: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or
sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of
pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV
news, it's probably off-topic."

and a little further down: "Please don't use Hacker News for political or
ideological battle. That destroys the curiosity this site exists for."

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perl4ever
What if people could downvote articles, but it would have no visible effect,
only advising moderators?

Or, just track how many downvotes and flagged comments are in a thread and
kill anything (the whole thread) that gets even minimal controversy?

If everything that is basically redundant with Reddit or other aggregators was
deleted, I think it would be like 60+% at this point, but why not go ahead and
try it?

Enforcing "high quality" discussion on low quality topics is manifestly a
complete failure.

