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Comment by Buttons840 | Hacker News Reader

Some Googling will bring up articles saying the post office has been losing money for awhile (which some think is just fine, since they are a government service and we don't expect all government services to turn a profit on their own).

Trump recently appointed a new Postmaster General which is reportedly making a lot of changes. This is now a political issue because many believe the changes are politically motivated due to the upcoming election during a pandemic when, not surprisingly, a lot of people will vote by mail.

It's especially concerning because we are clearly on a course which will lead to exceptionally low confidence in the results of the election, no matter what happens. So even if the USPS isn't profitable, it seems worth while to at least prop it up for a few more months so we can have a fair election and (equally important) have the results be trusted by the people.

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It’s the other way around. The more vote by mail, the higher the probability of fraud, and therefore the lower the trust in the results.

That's highly debated. My state has voted by mail for at least a decade and I'm not aware of any problems.

But only for roughly 1/2 of people. For the other half, voting in person would disenfranchise some demographics.

Please provide credible evidence for this claim.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/07/new-yor...

https://wtop.com/virginia/2020/08/unsolicited-absentee-appli...

Even if the claim is true, does allowing the post office to half-fail at such a critical time help matters in any way?

Neither of those articles mentions fraud at all. In fact, they strive to point out the problem of under funded postal and electoral systems...

I don't see where the postal system is the problem in these scenarios. USPS does not print or count ballots

> “We are aware that some of the mailers may have directed the return envelopes to the wrong election offices.”

Nothing is fraud if you're naive/charitable enough in how you interpret things.

From the article that you posted:

> Ballot-printing firms couldn’t keep up with demand, and the already rickety U.S. Postal Service didn’t move the ballots to and from voters quickly enough.

> I don't see where the postal system is the problem in these scenarios.

>> Patel said his campaign is looking at thousands of other votes that seem to be missing postmarks entirely—a post-office error

Read your own link.

A judge has asked Trump's legal team to submit evidence of mail in voter fraud.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-13/trump-app...

It will be interesting to see what they submit.

People will debate whether mail in voting is good or bad, fraudulent or not, etc. That's fine, let them debate, legislate, appeal to courts, etc.

But besides all that: There is simply no scenario where allowing the USPS to half-fail improves the situation.

Even if the USPS was running perfectly, this election would still have unusually low trust, because of the pandemic and because of our especially toxic political climate. Adding a hobbled USPS to the mix makes things much worse.

Lots of people are saying Trump is trying to "muddy the waters" of the election. I suppose Trumps motivation may be debated, but I think the result is clear: A half functioning USPS will "muddy the waters" of the election result. Does anyone disagree that this will be the result? Even if (being charitable) that was not the intention.

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