
Don’t reconnect mailing machines, USPS tells plants. Tacoma does it anyway - jzig
https://www.kuow.org/stories/post-offices-ordered-not-to-reinstall-recently-removed-mail-sorting-machinery
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Taek
At what point is the stuff happening with the USPS criminal? I've only been
watching from a distance but the post office drama has struck me particularly
sharply as a big red flag of corruption, a large threat to our democracy, and
something we should be very upset about. Criminally upset about.

Am I off base?

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darksaints
One of the most transparently political acts of voter suppression that has
ever occurred in the US. This is the sort of thing we should expect to happen
in Venezuela, Haiti, Russia, or Afghanistan...and now it is our political
reality. My great grandparents left Portugal for the US, then a beacon of
freedom, when things like this started happening in the 1920s. I'm reliving
all of their stories now, and now I'm thinking I might have to emigrate back
to Portugal, which is now a relative beacon of freedom.

~~~
sam36
>One of the most transparently political acts of voter suppression that has
ever occurred in the US.

I totally agree! For months media has encouraged large group gatherings in the
form of protests and riots and now they tell us to not "gather" to vote but
instead mail it in. It's crazy!

~~~
foogazi
Since when does voting by mail equal voter suppression?

~~~
thesuperbigfrog
It's not voting by mail in and of itself that is the problem.

It is the willful dismantling of postal processing machinery to slow and
reduce the throughput of the postal system, thereby threatening vote-by-mail
ballots to be not delivered on time and possibly lost.

The timing and overall effect stink of corruption and voter suppression.

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neilv
I've long had a high opinion of the USPS overall. And this quote from the
article sounds like Tacoma is keeping it real, and getting the production job
done, at an especially critical time:

> _By Wednesday night, five of the machines in Tacoma had been reconnected.
> Parts of two others had been scavenged and incorporated into the plant’s
> existing machines to boost their mail-sorting capacity._

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elviejo
What is the justification, to disconnect this machines, and do by hand what
currently is automatic?

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darksaints
If you disconnect machines, you can slow down the mail, which means that you
can slow down the votes of people who have indicated via polls that they are
overwhelmingly going to vote for someone else.

~~~
sheepdestroyer
The end goal is well understood, but I think the person you are responding to
wants to know (as I do) what is the justification given to get there?

Are they just saying "disconnect the machines" without giving any reason to do
so?

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jedberg
The given reason was "they don't need them anymore because mail volume is
down". It was a cost cutting measure.

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jrs235
And count on hours and hours of waiting at polling places in blue areas of red
states due to intentional reduction of polling places.

[https://m.imgur.com/gallery/fBALblG](https://m.imgur.com/gallery/fBALblG)

~~~
verylittlemeat
[https://xkcd.com/1138/](https://xkcd.com/1138/)

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scarface74
What’s crazy is that the supposed small government politicians who believe
that the Post Office is another sign of “big government” doing what private
industry should be doing don’t realize that the post office is specifically
spelled out in the Constitution as one of the responsibilities of the
government.

~~~
dragonwriter
It's actually an _authorized power_ , not a responsibility (arguably, the
responsibility being a view of the founders can be viewed as an implicit in
the power, but only the power is express in the text.)

And they know, they just don't _care_.

