It's Happening Again

Our manufacturing and e-commerce business ships thousands of packages each month. Around this time of year our shipping carriers, UPS and Fedex, send out notices to all of their customers. The notices inform us that shipping in the period around the Christmas holidays will likely be delayed (this year, UPS tells use that they're going to raise their rates a bit as well) and that we should plan accordingly to be sure we get orders to customers in the November-December time frame. They're being honest with us, and unless you're delusional or a conspiracy theorist, you would never assert that either carrier is trying to ruin Christmas or our business.

Yet over the past week, another major carrier, the USPS, has also sent out a notice that warns states to plan any mail-in ballot campaign (a horrendously bad idea in any event) accordingly because the USPS cannot adequately handle the volume implied by this last-minute plan, cobbled together with chewing gum and bailing wire by the Democrats. Yet the Democrats and their trained hamsters in the media assert that these notices and scheduled modifications of certain equipment and post boxes are "voter suppression" and a "threat to democracy" (they love both phrases). In the long tradition of the Russia Collusion hoax, the Dems have created the mail-in ballot hoax. The editors of the Wall Street Journal comment:

News broke Friday that the U.S. Postal Service has warned dozens of states, via letters from USPS General Counsel Thomas Marshall, that their deadlines “for requesting and casting mail-in ballots are incongruous with the Postal Service’s delivery standards.” On cue, Democrats and the press portrayed this as evidence of Trumpian sabotage and voter suppression.

In reality, it’s closer to the opposite: an attempt by the USPS to forestall state election failure. The letters were planned before the new Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, took the reins on June 15. Mr. Marshall sent nearly identical advice to election officials in a May letter posted at USPS.com. Strange public conspiracy.

“To account for delivery standards and to allow for contingencies (e.g., weather issues or unforeseen events), voters should mail their return ballots at least 1 week prior to the due date,” Mr. Marshall wrote in May. The same rule, he added, should apply to blank ballots: “The Postal Service also recommends that state or local election officials use FirstClass Mail and allow 1 week for delivery to voters.”

These guidelines are worth reiterating, given how states have bungled their recent primary elections. New York voters can request an absentee ballot using a mail application, which is valid if postmarked a week before Election Day. As a result of this lax deadline, plus a deluge of applications, roughly 30,000 ballots weren’t mailed to voters until June 22, a day before the primary election.

That seven-day deadline “is unrealistic,” Douglas Kellner, co-chair of the New York State Board of Elections, testified in court last month. The state board has argued for moving it back to 14 days, in line with the USPS suggestion of allowing seven days for delivery each way. Is Mr. Kellner complicit in postal sabotage?

Throughout the Trump years, the Dems have adopted a "by whatever means necessary" strategy to regain power. If that means promoting blatant lies, if it means sullying the reputation of both private citizens or public officials, if it mean co-opting an already biased media to do their dirty work for them—so be it. The mail-in ballot hoax is a perfect example. 

In addition, the Dems get the added benefit of deflection. The hoax allows them to avoid very real questions about the efficacy (and danger) of the mail-in ballot scheme. It also allows them to deflect attention from their cognitively disabled candidate, Joe Biden, who remains hidden from the media** and refuses to answer any probing question. Perfect!

So the next time you hear the Dems or one of their hamsters breathlessly tell you that you won't be getting any mail because ... Donald Trump, just remember that the same people who are telling you that, told you that Trump and Putin colluded to defeat Hillary, when in fact, we now know it was Hillary who colluding with the Russians and rogue FBI executives to ruin Donald Trump. Unbelievable ... yet it's happening again.

FOOTNOTE:

** Not quite. Joe Biden did grant a 'hard-hitting' interview to rapper Cardi B. Not Chuck Todd or Jake Tapper or Chris Wallace—Cardi B! 

Okay then ...

UPDATE - 1:

Byron York adds a comment on deflection—the Dems attempt to blame the probable failure to adequately process, validate and count mail-in ballots, not to their rushed and inadequate plan, but to their delusional assertion that Trump has sabotaged the USPS:

There are, of course, compelling examples of [mail-in ballot] election dysfunction, most notably the mess New York made of some of its congressional primaries this summer. But rather than representing a Postal Service problem, that was because some states are unprepared for a dramatic increase of voting by mail. The states have to prepare the ballots, address them, and process and count them when the Postal Service delivers them. That is the focus of the entirely legitimate fears of a possible vote-counting disaster this year. But it's not the Postal Service.

The latest Democrat hoax says otherwise, Byron.

UPDATE - 2:

OMG!!! The hoax has now become a full-blown mail "crisis." It's almost as if members of COVID's Team Apocalypse have been drafted to become crisis managers for the USPS. Rick Moran comments:

That dastardly Donald Trump is at it again. He is either the evilest man ever to hold the office of president or the dumbest. He is either a Machiavellian genius manipulating the media and his hypnotized followers or a bumbling know-nothing idiot.

Trump is being accused of sabotaging the November elections because he won’t give the postal unions and incompetent managers in the postal service $25 billion to play with. The money will stave off catastrophe for about a year at the rate the USPS is burning through cash. Without that money, we’re informed by those in the know, thousands — no, tens of thousands — no, millions of voters who wait until the last minute to mail in an absentee ballot might not have their votes counted because, well, Trump.

The procrastinators in America are up in arms and plan a demonstration to show their outrage. But it probably won’t happen until after the election since that’s when they’ll eventually get around to it.

The “crisis” in postal delivery presupposes that, prior to Trump’s shenanigans, the USPS was doing fine — nothing that a few tens of billions of taxpayer dollars couldn’t fix. In fact, that’s what the postal unions are saying. In a statement released on Saturday, the letter carriers and postal workers’ unions assure the public that even without the money, they can do the job.

So ... if that's the case, what exactly is the problem? The USPS can and will deliver the mail. The problem isn't them ... it's the idiocy of a last minute voting scheme, spawned in the fever swamps of Democrat strategy sessions, suggesting that state governments that have never done universal mail in ballots can magically create a distribution, collection, verification, and counting infrastructure that has not previously existed and do it in an accurate and timely fashion that uncovers fraud, double voting, and vote harvesting. They can't ... if recent experience in NY, NJ and VA is any indication. That's why the hoax/crisis has been manufactured by the Dems.

UPDATE - 3:

And this rather obvious tweet—at least to everyone outside the fever swamps of the Democratic Party—on why we should be very worried that fraud and abuse will be the stepchildren of any widespread universal mail-in ballot approach.

UPDATE - 4:

Of course, omertå is in place (see tomorrow's post for more details), so the media refuses to report on how other developed countries view universal mail in balloting. In the abstract of a paper titled, "Why Do Most Countries Ban Mail-In Ballots?: They Have Seen Massive Vote Fraud Problems," John Lott writes:

Thirty-seven states have so far changed their mail-in voting procedures this year in response to the Coronavirus. Despite frequent claims that President Trump’s warning about vote fraud/voting buying with mail-in ballots is “baselessly” or “without evidence” about mail-in vote fraud, there are numerous examples of vote fraud and vote buying with mail-in ballots in the United States and across the world. Indeed, concerns over vote fraud and vote buying with mail-in ballots causes the vast majority of countries to ban mail-in voting unless the citizen is living abroad.

Most developed countries ban mail-in ballots unless the citizen is living abroad or require Photo-IDs to obtain those ballots. Even higher percentages of European Union or other European countries ban mail-in ballots for in country voters. In addition, some countries that allow voting by mail for citizens living the country don’t allow it for everyone. For example, Japan and Poland have limited mail-in voting to those who have special certificates verifying that they are disabled.

France has made an exception this year to the ban on mail-in ballots to those who are sick or at particular risk during the Coronavirus pandemic. Poland and two cities in Russia have adopted mail-in ballots for elections this year only, but most countries haven't changed their regulations.

France banned mail-in voting in 1975 because of massive fraud in Corsica, where postal ballots were stolen or bought and voters cast multiple votes. Mail-in ballots were used to cast the votes of dead people. Examples for other countries are provided.

You'd think the media would think this information might be of interest, but hey ... it runs counter to the current hoax/crisis narrative.