I asked a question on the first pulled thread, about justification for removing the sorting machines. I don't know if anyone answered, but by the time I checked back, the thread was gone. Others must have had the same question, because the subject was part of TRMS the same evening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urAFZt91cDQ

https://youtu.be/d3gawciVBWA

And the 11th Hour newscast:

https://youtu.be/pIFdy6vgoHQ

This is from the USPS blog, dated Nov. 7, 2019:

"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 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 other shipper."

Talk about declaring a "war on Christmas!"

Here is your question Mama Goose, I copied it from the original thread.

I'm curious--has DeJoy come up with any justification for removing the sorting machines, however illogical? Has he stated that efficiency studies have found that they are X, compared to Y? I know we assume (and I believe, rightly so) that he is trying to sabotage voting by mail and the USPS in general, but has he made any claims? If anyone has a source, I'd like to read his justification.

My response is that I’ve read that long time USPS officials have said that studies reflect the machines, which sort 35,000 pieces of mail an hour with a .0 error rate are the most efficient means.

Thank you Lukki, but I was afraid if I re-posted verbatim, someone would take offense and use that as an excuse to flag this thread.

While a lot has been stated about removing the machines and at least one article mentioned that with the drop in mail less are being needed I did wonder if replacements had been ordered from a favored company. There used to be a sorting facility here but now mail is sent to Des Moines or Nebraska then back. The two cover different regions, or so I have been told.

Something I have wondered because I have never seen a mail in ballot is what size is it in the mail. If not normal sized it must be special sorted.

Isn't DeJoy going to be called before congress to explain? I thought I heard that this morning.

Copied/pasted from fb (the Slackers are a music group, toured the small venues constantly. I'm sure other musicians, and other small business people, are in the same boat). Quote starts now:

One of the things that has kept the Slackers going during these covid non-touring days has been our mail order business. It gives us a fighting chance at survival.

This has been done almost exclusively through the USPS which Trump is now directly trying to wreck. Without media mail, without the post office's cheaper rates, our small business would have been crushed over the last 4 months.

The Republican plan for decades has been to defund, hamstring, and privatize. Its all about making sure that the post office will fail in its current form. Politically connected contractors have been happily picking up the bits and pieces. Making their loot at the publics expense.

Now, with the need for good mail service to help voting and turnout. Its about control.

To make sure the anti-trump vote is supressed.

The house of representatives is about to go into a rare recess session to deal with the post office. Support them in this endeavor. Contact your congressperson and tell them to defend the integrity of the post office. Im contacting mine....

/end quote.

maifleur03, a mail-in ballot is much larger than a regular envelope. The one I received for the primary was about 5"x7", IIRC. I'm not sure how something that size would be sorted, but surely they have a machine for larger items.

"Regular envelopes" come in many different sizes. The USPS's own Priority Mail and Express Mail flat rate envelopes should be viewed as a "regular envelope" and they're slightly larger than 8.5 x 11, to hold sheets that size.

This mail service caper is just another example of the infantile and very transparent illegal and politically motivated conduct of the administration, threatening democracy at its core. Fortunately most of the population is smarter than they are and people will find a way to safely vote.

It’s my guess that the sorting machines are not built to only accomodate one size. Just like many manufacturers like Ford have adjusted their equipment to help produce PPE for hospitals, the equipment for the USPS can adjust their equipment for the ballots. Mail in voting is not new and they have always managed.

I heard in the news this morning that the labor force of the USPS is disputing what officials have been told by “De notso Joy” about the ballots and not being able to manage the load. They say that with the equiment they had in place meeting ALL the deadlines is achievable even without any additional funding.

You are welcome mama-goose. I am not afraid to repost anything that is in that thread because every single post met the guideline criteria

I think the Post office gets way more Christmas mail than mail-in ballots. Assuming every registered voter sends one in , that's one. Back in the day, I'd send 50-75 Xmas cards. I know most people don't send that many or any but I'm guessing it's way more than the one ballot a person. Many people like grandparents send money in their cards if not able to travel , so I'm just guessing this will not be a problem and if it is will be fixed in time. Because someone getting a Xmas card by Xmas day is waaaay more important than their one ballot be counted in time.

Read today's news about Congress being called into session over this. I think that's a good thing.

Today he says he is instructing USPS to speed things up. Crisis created, crisis averted. Our hero.

Here are the requirements although I have received one of those square birthday cards and did not have to pay extra but that was a couple of years ago. https://pe.usps.com/businessmail101?ViewName=Letters

The one thing that the news is not reporting and it seems to have flown under the radar is the Board of Govenors for the USPS. They are infact appointed by the President and then confirmed by the Senate so all of those board members are basically Frumpy people too.

“The Board is made up of nine Governors appointed by the President of the United States with the advice and consent of the Senate. No more than five Governors can be members of the same political party. The other two members of the Board are the Postmaster General and the Deputy Postmaster General.”

Here’s an example of late arriving mail...out Electric bill arrived on 8/15, payment due 8/26. Statement date was 8/4. If usually arrives on or about the 6th.

Why not switch your bills to E-delivery and autopay?

It's easier and saves trees. No need to involve USPS

Anyone wanting an easy way to communicate dissatisfaction with your congressional representatives on this issue can text USPS to 50409, then follow the prompts.

how many mailbox were removed / moved /replaced under Obama?

how do you know the machines aren't going to be cleaned and checked prior to the holiday mail rush?

when you receive your mail in ballot, check the scan code on the envelope they sent you to return it in. see if you can find what identifies you as a republican or democrat in it. supposedly there should be nothing on that envelope to identify that. but from what I've heard, there is.

"but from what I've heard, there is."

Source?

sorting machines are moved around all the time, to new centers in other cities - kind of like airline hubs ... we [in the newspaper biz] are constantly having to update where we mail bags of mail to be sorted by a postal center. One that has folks in a wrankle THIS TIME is a plan to move a major redistribution center AFTER the elections, not before.

I found this to be a rather interesting article.

https://flowingdata.com/2020/08/14/reduced-mail-sorting-capacity/

Great. All our outgoing mail is shipped to Columbus for sorting and post-marking.

"but from what I've heard, there is."

Source?

a video of a woman (rep) comparing her return envelope to that of her brother (dem). I don't know how to copy a video to here. I can't even post one of my own photos here. I gave up trying years back. but it should be online somewhere.

Seems like the potential lawsuits have put this on hold and trump and his crony have back downed due to public pressure and lawsuits. The Post office changes won't happen till after November third.

One that has folks in a wrankle THIS TIME is a plan to move a major redistribution center AFTER the elections, not before.

yes, but the left will bring up anything they can use and people they spout this stuff to don't check the facts. They don't care enough to do that.

I've also read (can't prove it but it makes sense) that the postal unions are left and tell the workers that the right is trying to shut down post offices (their work places). No one is doing that... streamline it, yes. get it to pay for itself, yes. not do away with it. It's no different than most government agencies - if the money to operate it is coming from the taxpayers, it is wasteful to the EXTREME. They don't care. It's gimme, gimme, gimme. while many in the PO work hard, many do not. A LOT could be cut back.

"a video of a woman (rep) comparing her return envelope to that of her
brother (dem). I don't know how to copy a video to here. I can't even
post one of my own photos here."

Where was that video?

Do you expect anything other than a machine can decipher the code? Do you think anyone at the post office cares what's in an envelope?

Is what you're describing something for which there's legit evidence, it's known and understood or not known and just speculation? Is it speculation and propoganda from a known to be untruthful politicized source?

Well DeJoy announced today that changes would stop until after the election..

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/18/politics/post-office-dejoy/index.html

My wife's birthday is tomorrow. She got 4 cards (Arizona, New York, New York and Illinois). All mailed last Saturday and they arrived today with two birthday gifts from her sisters. Because of the boxes (gifts), our regular letter carrier brought it to the door and we stood there and chatted a bit, neither of us with face masks!

I wish that my lens cap for my camera had arrived in such a timely manner!

Yes, changes are stopped “temporarily”, however no one has said if the machines and/or boxes that were pulled will be returned. I suspect that after congress gets a hold of them and the slew of investigations start, they will drop the matter entirely. They better just put it all back asap or they are not off the hook.

As for the envelopes having a code: each state individually is responsible for the ballots and their envelopes. Some states are solidly blue, others red, some purple. In my state, ballots are mailed out by and sent back to county boards of elections, which are bipartisan.

To claim that ballot envelopes nationwide are coded either R or D would require a belief that both parties are in cahoots nationwide to somehow suppress the votes of one party or the other. And that is beyond belief.

I wondered too about what will happen with equipment that's already been removed.

FWIW, this has been going around:

Just in case desertsteph's misunderstanding of postal funding spreads the Postal Service is not funded by tax dollars. They are and have been self supporting since 1970. They have a fund of tax dollars that they can borrow when finances get tight but it has to be paid back.

"Just in case desertsteph's misunderstanding (s)"........

Not likely.

We've had a message from our county's board of elections stating that they have had so many questions about what's on the outside of ballot envelopes that they sent a photo. There is NOTHING to indicate political party.

There is a section on the exterior that a voter must sign if he is having another person hand deliver his ballot. (Those would be interesting to see.)

🤣

So, I'd like to know why destroying those sorting machines doesn't constitute destruction of federal property? There is absolutely no excuse for what he did and the purpose is glaringly obvious.

FWIW, I understand our president had someone else deliver his absentee/mail-in ballot. I think that's called 'ballot harvesting'.

And I saw reporting today that there is no intention of restoring what was already done. I wonder, if the pressure keeps up, will that change?

By law, they were supposed to consult with congress before implementing these changes. What good is a law if it can be broken like this without any recourse?

Exactly, Lukki. There should absolutely be repercussions, but we all know there won't be. The dictator gets what he wants, yet again.

test

OmG.....I went to my activity today and was surprised to see ALL of the threads I’ve posted sitting there. I couldn’t find them in the public pages though so I did a test and here it is. If you’ve had a thread deleted...you might want to check your houzz activity.

Timely thread revival, Lukki Irish. DH and I have yet to receive our ballots, which were to be mailed to us nine days ago, at the latest. We plan to place our completed ballots in the drop box at our city hall rather than mail them to the county clerk's office.

I received mine later than expected by a couple of days and was a little bent, but afterwards, I saw a news story that said when they are mailed, they are mailed by hand and go to those over seas first. Hearing that helped for the delay to at least make sense to me. You might want to try calling or going to the clerks office, I would. Glad the revival helped!