Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems | Hacker News Reader

Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

cbsnews.com

304 pointsck2330 comments

Regardless what anyone thinks about the security of voting in the US. I'd hope that they could see how massively upending multiple states' voting systems 2 months before the midterms is a really bad idea. Even with the best intentions, implementing such a sweeping untested change so rapidly is a horrible idea.

(No, I don't support it regardless, but surely even if you do you could recognize that the timeframe is way too short).

To go beyond the understatement of "bad idea" (and likely make the subtext into text): This thing is unmistakable malice, not mere incompetence.

There's no "oops I didn't know" or "oops I timed the project wrong" or "oops I forgot about the election deadline" or "oops nobody told me about the court-order prohibiting it", etc.

There is something incredibly cancerous when a certain party abhors democracy, and does everything they can to undermine the voting rights or access to groups they think won't vote for them.

I would expect most Americans would see this as grotesquely anti-American, and absolutely against the principals of the country. Instead it barely makes news and is just another "get whatever advantage you can" tactic.

"Abhors democracy" isn't necessarily the right phrase for the on-the-ground majority. The leadership, sure. But not the average folk.

"Has such a small imagination that they can't imagine they wouldn't be the majority" is more like it.

For all the old fears of "we need the senate so big cities don't run the country" they have a massive blind spot of there being less diversity of thought, and more of a monoculture, in suburban and rural areas. And they don't realize that because of this they shouldn't be surprised if not everyone agrees with them.

There's a sizable part of the group that truly believe that cities get more representation than they do, that there are more rural Americans than urban.

And that they are the “real Americans” who make all the money and all of their tax dollars go to pay for lazy city people. Never mind that counties which vote democratic account for over 70% of the GDP. Their entire existence is subsidized by the actual tax payers in cities and they resent us for it.

Even the house is unfairly tilted towards smaller states because of the 538 limit

Ever so slightly, definitely not as bad as the senate.

I'm all for doubling the size of the house, but that's more to combat gerrymandering. The larger the size of the house, the harder and less impactful it is to gerrymander. Though before that I'd definitely push for federal anti-gerrymandering legislation.

You'd be surprised what hate is capable of. Once you paint a side as the enemy and convince half of the population of that, it becomes easy to carryout acts even if they're detrimental to the your side too. Look at the US economy and inflation caused by the tariffs and wars for instance. It's the 'our side is winning' mentality shortsightedness that destroys nations and institutions. By the time people realize this, it's often too late.

> You'd be surprised what hate is capable of.

Up to and including causing illness and death to oneself and one's loved ones:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_of_Whiteness

After hanging out on Trumper forums to try and understand their point of view, I realized that they have a VERY narrow view of who they want in their "ideal democracy": Pure White Conservative Christians, No browns or blacks, No voting women (their place is in the home and the kitchen), No gays, Must love guns, must support everything that their GEOTUS says even if he contradicts himself.

It's strange though, because Trump's elderly voters are the ones who vote by mail. Some observers say he would have won the incredibly close 2020 race if he hadn't discouraged mail in voting.

I did hear a lot of people claim this, and it seemed mostly like unqualified schadenfreude and fantasy.

In the most recent analysis, about 37% of Democrats use mail in voting, versus 24% of Republicans. This is why Republicans often take the lead in vote counting, and then because of Republican-imposed rules mail in ballots are counted later in the process, suddenly turning the tide. Which then yields lots of "the fix is in!" undermining of democracy -- at least in every race they don't win (the ones they win are 100% fair, of course) -- because the GOP of 2026 absolutely hates democracy, and they'll do everything they can to destroy it.

Trump supporters used to speak up on this site. Surely they still exist but all I hear is crickets

Hopefully they're embarrassed.

If you genuinely don't understand what's happening - it's the same reason that political discussion on Reddit became completely detached from reality. On these sort of topics you have a relatively small number of hyper partisans that aim to censor discussion through the abuse of flagging, and they're mostly successful. So all that's left is a circle jerk which has no meaningful connection to views in the actual world, or even on e.g. Hacker News. I'm not really sure why anybody would want this outcome; I suppose that in their mind it's some sort of attempt at manufacturing consent.

Anyhow, there's plenty of rich discussion to be had, but you increasingly need to do it in the real world, or on smaller forums/channels. This will likely be an even bigger issue in the future as LLMs will enable full automation of this sort of abuse that will ultimately probably be impossible to stop. In the grand scheme of things we're likely at the tail end of the era where having genuine political discussion online was possible, if not already slightly beyond it.

Everything you're saying can be true and co-exist with the reality, which is the current administration has been so vindictive, short-sighted, and nakedly serving the billionaire class, that its own supporters have had to completely disengage with everything The Executive Branch is doing.

If you talk to Trump supporters in real life, they are not having nuanced discussions about the state of our country, they are completely tuned out to what is going on. They have to be. It's embarrassing. Instead, they are still talking about trans people and wokeness, because that is evergreen territory that can forever be raged about but never "solved," because it never affected them in the first place.

You accuse HN of being in an echo chamber that you've disregarded an even simpler explanation: The cognitive dissonance of voting for someone who immediately backed out of everything he promised (no wars, releasing Epstein files, serving the middle class) that it has broken some people's perception of their own judgement, and they can't engage with it anymore.

There's really no other reason to be suddenly quiet. This isn't 2021, just after Jan 6th. This is almost two years into Republicans having total control of the government. It's just been such a disaster people don't want to publicly root for them anymore.

I think GP is right: this place has become an echo chamber. Even if someone posted a thoughtful rebuttal, it would not be seriously considered, or worse, flagged. And why would anyone waste their time when they know their efforts will be immediately dismissed and memory holed?

> Even if someone posted a thoughtful rebuttal

You could easily test this by posting a thoughtful rebuttal.

I've been posting actively on this thread and I haven't yet seen a thoughtful rebuttal, although there have been several comments in favor of the current administration's approach to voter enforcement via the USPS. Unfortunately, literally all of those comments were based on misinformation or make sweeping assertions, unsupported by evidence, about voter fraud in the US.

The thread is about general echo chamber / liberal bias though, not specifically on USPS/voter fraud.

Any/Every discussion that makes the top page on HN about politics will flood out most of the conservative discussion, further most of the comments are echo chamber 'me too, Trump fascist' that adds very little to the conversation.

> Any/Every discussion that makes the top page on HN about politics will flood out most of the conservative discussion, further most of the comments are echo chamber 'me too,

I keep waiting for all these well-thought-out, factually-based, good-faith arguments offered by conservatives but for some reason they never appear. It seems that the only comments written by conservatives are knee-jerk, xenophobic, semi-literate arguments based in half-truths and GOP talking points. Maybe we scared off all the "good" conservatives?

> Trump fascist' that adds very little to the conversation.

I agree that it adds little to the conversation, but it's not clear to me what else you'd like to hear. If you think that a federal takeover of state elections in absence of any real election crisis is not fascist behavior, feel free to make that argument here and I will respond in a temperate and measured tone.

Are you talking about this particular topic, or all of them? Are you able to say one positive change current administration has purposefully done?

"I agree that it adds little to the conversation"

Do you think those comments should be flagged and [deleted] or they add value here and should be kept around?

> Are you able to say one positive change current administration has purposefully done?

Not sure what kind of test this is supposed to be, but okay, I'll bite. He's done some things that could be good, but because of his unique pathology, he makes even good things bad. Look at the Trump Accounts. Creating a savings account for children is potentially a good thing. Here are the problems with it: during his presidency, he has single-handedly doubled the national debt, so this isn't a great opportunity to give away money; the move is ideological incoherent, coming from a guy who thinks that wealth redistribution is un-American; and of course he's a narcissist, so he's incapable of doing anything with stamping his name on it. It's hilarious that MAGAs decry "partisanship" but for some reason love obviously partisan, and likely Hatch Act-violating, nonense like this.

> Do you think those comments should be flagged and [deleted] or they add value here and should be kept around?

Some of those comments are flagged because they express non-constructive, hyper-partisan, anti-immigrant sentiment. They deserve to be flagged. Some are flagged because they are just unpopular on HN; those should not be flagged. I'd never claim that HN doesn't lean left, and it's always hard to be a minority in a community. The appropriate response from conservatives like you, in order to prevent your comments from being flagged, is to comment better: use factual evidence, logical arguments, and non-partisan language. Unfortunately, the few HN conservatives around here aren't doing that.

In this thread you said "...they are doing this to inject chaos into the election results, giving them cover to claim any result they want or even to just throw out the results entirely. Catastrophic problems are the means to that end." Try to imagine how that would read to somebody who wasn't already sharply biased in the same direction as yourself. What would you assume?

It reads as the exact sort of evidence free, misinformation driven, conspiratorial and sweeping assertion that you're now complaining about. The reality is that most political discussion online has been trending towards sewer level content, and I think a huge part of it is the echo chamber issue. You don't get any pushback from stuff like this online when the only people engaging with you are themselves already heavily biased in a similar direction. Oh sorry, you actually did get several people pushing back, including one merely asking for evidence. Perhaps you didn't see that because those comments were all flagged and buried.

> It reads as the exact sort of evidence free misinformation driven conspiratorial sweeping assertion that you're now complaining about.

It reads that way only if you are intentionally ignoring evidence.

We're talking about an Executive Branch in the hands of a man who has shown historic contempt for election outcomes and little moral qualms with altering them to suit his agenda.

* Conspiracy after the 2020 election to float fake electors

* Massive and ongoing campaign of lies about the illegitimacy of the 2020 election, in absence of any evidence

* Demanding states perform mid-decade redistricting, in contravention of longstanding custom

* Repeated calls to "cancel" upcoming election

* Repeated allusions to running for a third presidential term, in violation of the Constitution

Needless to say, these kind of actions and pronouncements are unprecedented in this country. When a person tells you they don't care about accurate elections, believe them.

It's incredibly hard to think that this person is deeply concerned about election integrity when he has shown such little regard for existing election laws and customs. Your willingness to overlook this evidence speaks of your own partisan bias. Oh wait, are going to say he's "joking" and I don't have a sense of humor?

EDIT: formatting

You certainly already know what you're doing or you wouldn't have added your joke disclaimer. Here [1] is a clip of Trump "alluding to a third presidential term." You 'not knowing' he's joking has nothing to do with not having a sense of humor, as any human alive would know he's joking. So your rather wild conspiracies are based on jokes and a very broad extrapolation from 2020.

So you have, in your own post - misinformation, sweeping assertations, and claims unsupported by evidence. Of course this is the contemporary state of political discourse and so I'm not at all implying there's anything particularly egregious about you in particular. This sort of stuff is ubiquitous, and I think echo chambers are a big part of the reason why. Who cares about making viable or relevant comments when it's largely just a mixture of a signaling circle jerk paired alongside bias confirmation.

[1] - https://youtu.be/iGDTiTfovwI?t=136

> disclaimer

No idea what disclaimer you are referring to.

> as any human alive would know he's joking.

On the contrary, I know that he's not joking. He doesn't think he's joking. This isn't a one-off comment: he's selling hats about running in 2028. He wasn't joking about "building the wall," about mass deportations, about tear-gassing peaceful protesters [1], or about trying to steal the 2020 election. Every time his supporters downplay his ridiculous rhetoric as "trolling," he doubles down. Trump's followers certainly think he's serious about running again, including Steve Bannon. When has he ever admitted to joking?

> So you have, in your own post - misinformation, sweeping assertations, and claims unsupported by evidence.

I've given you evidence of Trump being utterly serious in his utterly ridiculous claims and plenty of historical evidence of contempt for elections in my previous comment, which you have failed to address. So I don't take your accusation of "claimed unsupported by evidence" to be accurate.

When has he ever admitted to joking? More or less always if we speak of implicitness, but quite often explicitly as well. He knows that part will get snipped out by partisans which makes them look even more absurd. In the context I linked above he says, "I'm only kidding" literally immediately following his joke about a third term.

You haven't given any evidence. You've instead spread misinformation, relied heavily on broad sweeping assertions based primarily on such, and then combined that all into elaborate conspiracy theories. And then you complain about the quality of others' posts.

Partisanship just blinds people, and is something that should be avoided like the plague.

> When has he ever admitted to joking? More or less always if we speak of implicitness,

Sorry, but I have to laugh at the idea of an "implicit admission." Also known as "not an admission." I feel like you have a parasocial relationship with the man, and that you are projecting your own emotions on him.

> You haven't given any evidence.

The evidence I've given is the man's own words. But you don't want to believe that, because you're too deep in the cult. You're at a point where no amount of evidence could possibly reach you because your emotional defense systems won't allow you to accept that you've been conned.

> Partisanship just blinds people, and is something that should be avoided like the plague.

Well, we agree on that much.

> Partisanship just blinds people, and is something that should be avoided like the plague.

Well, we agree on that much.

> as any human alive would know he's joking

You are perfectly demonstrating the lack of engagement I was referring to. You would have to ignore the entire history of his political career to think he is doing anything other than testing the waters here.

Furthermore, he has done more than a single joke about this. Over multiple interviews, he has laid out specific methods he could use to functionally seek a third term, including running as a VP to Vance and forcing him aside. Is it really a joke if you're talking about it over dozens of rallies and interviews, and how you would seriously do it?

Will it materialize in anything? He is so fickle and unfocused that he will float every possibility under the sun and then go with his gut. It depends more on how his base reacts

I think he genuinely believes that the 2020 election was likely stolen and that his extreme actions were a response to that. I also think he enjoys trolling the media, probably in part because its his personality but also probably because it's the best way to take on yellow journalism. By overtly feeding the media stuff that he knows will be taken out of context, he lets them destroy themselves. When the media run sensationalist stories framing jokes as legitimate positions, they make partisans rejoice, but they make everybody else look at the lot of the partisans and media alike and mostly just laugh. There's a reason confidence in the media is now in the 20s. 'Why aren't you taking these jokes seriously!?' isn't the most compelling call to action.

You're also, probably unintentionally, spreading misinformation here. Trump never laid out the idea of running as Vance's VP and forcing him aside. Rather, a journalist proposed that scenario (though it was "passing the baton" rather than forcing him out) and he said 'yeah that's one way [to have a third term]'. You can see the media tiptoe around this slightly inconvenient fact when running their stories. For instance here's [1] AP recently talking about third term stuff where they state "[Trump] acknowledged that one method was to be the running mate to Vice President JD Vance in 2028 — then have Vance step aside if the pair won."

That's accurate, but the implication to somebody who only relies on the media, instead of first party sources, is that Trump proposed it. Exactly like you're doing here. They feed you misinformation, you repeat it, and then believe other people who don't believe the same are themselves misinformed, because why would 'your' media lie to you. And that's a good question actually - it's not like there aren't endless completely genuine problems with Trump. The war with Iran is about as popular as AIDS, but for some reason the media didn't milk it anywhere near as much as they could have. How odd.

In any case, none of this would be news to you if you posted this in a place with more open discussion. Once again echo chambers are just so dumb, for everybody.

[1] - https://apnews.com/article/trump-third-term-postpresidency-f...

> I think he genuinely believes that the 2020 election was likely stolen

There are more-or-less two possibilities: either he believes that the election was stolen despite the total absence of evidence to that effect, in which case he is a fool; or he cynically pretends to believe that for the purpose of personal gain, in which case he is a liar and a con-man. Based on what we've all seen of his psychology, though, I think the more likely case is that he's simply unconnected to reality: he's spent his whole life in a billionaire bubble where everyone tells him what he wants to hear, and he's able to to convince himself that he won in 2020 because he wants to believe that.

> because it's the best way to take on yellow journalism.

What part of the reporting the fact that Biden won the 2020 election is "yellow journalism"?

> 'Why aren't you taking these jokes seriously!?' isn't the most compelling call to action.

Except, as I've already pointed out, people have been excusing behavior as a "joke" since 2016, and at every opportunity he proves that it's not a joke. People thought "Mexico will pay for a wall" was a joke; it wasn't, it was just a lie.

> Trump never laid out the idea of running as Vance's VP and forcing him aside.

I never he said he did. I did say that he said that he's "looking into ways that he can run," an idea supported by other people in Trump's orbit, such as Steven Bannon. It's not misinformation to say that Trump is considering running again, it's plainly stated in the record.

So your position is that: Trump said he's looking into running (but it's a joke), he's selling 2028 hats (but he's trolling), close advisers say he's running again (but that doesn't count). Do you understand why people think MAGA denies reality? Is there any possible evidence that would make you think he's thinking of running again? (For the record, I don't think he'll run again, because I think he will die or become gravely ill: were it not for that, he definitely would try.)

> That's accurate, but the implication to somebody who only relies on the media, instead of first party sources,

Oh, you have first party sources? Great, please tell me what Donald Trump has personally told you, that has not been publicly revealed.

> In any case, none of this would be news to you if you posted this in a place with more open discussion.

Nothing you've told me is new. I've heard all this before. The entire country has spent a decade hearing people like spout nonsense like "Trump isn't a politiician, he tells it like it is" and "Trump is already rich so he has no need to make money from the presidency" and "Trump may lack expertise, but he'll hire great advisers" and other provably incorrect statements. You mistakenly believe that we disagree because we haven't heard your side. The truth is that we've all heard your side incessantly and we just think you are dumb and/or crazy.

It's unclear to me whether you are incapable of following a thread, or are having trouble keeping your sock puppets in order. I'm not talking to you, or at least this account here - and you responded multiple times to another post under the same account, all while referring to yourself as we.

In any case, I'm not going to respond to poorly constructed straw men. If you want to speak like an adult I'll happily continue the discussion, if you want to keep ranting like a partisan - then perhaps it's genuinely impossible for you to discuss things outside of echo chambers.

> It's unclear to me whether you are incapable of following a thread, or are having trouble keeping your sock puppets in order.

I don't use sock puppets. Believe it or not, the structure of HN comments allows conversations between > 2 people. If you prefer a private conversation, use email. You've already responded to my comment [1]; I can respond to whatever comment I want. If you don't like what I say, you can write back appropriately or ignore it. Accusing me of not following the rules, however, is a very weird response.

> In any case, I'm not going to respond to poorly constructed straw men.

Please be specific: what straw man?

> if you want to keep ranting like a partisan -

Oh, the irony.

> then perhaps it's genuinely impossible for you to discuss things outside of echo chambers.

Let me get this straight: we have differing views, we're in an environment where we can freely discuss them, and yet you call it an "echo chamber" in the same breath that you refuse to continue a conversation. No one here is being censored, the only obstacle to communication is your attitude. Maybe you would feel more comfortable in /r/conservative (i.e. an actual echo chamber that aggressively censors opposing views)?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49560830

There are currently 20 root level comments. 8 have been flagged. Which is again starting to look a lot like Reddit.

Some of those flags are quite reasonable, but some are not. And this happens every single time you have a thread that brings out the partisan flaggers, which will discourage future conversation from those that did bother to try to discuss and got hit by them. Absent the flaggers existence, you'd have a ratio of discussion that would much more closely resemble what we see in things like support polls.

But with it, you end up with an echo chamber that is not only uninformative, but malinformative because you now have absolutely no clue what people are thinking, why they're thinking that, what their relative numbers may be, or any opportunity to try to change their mind. So you just end up with polarization and both sides radicalizing themselves as they end up in echo chambers where a partisan view is taken as the baseline for normal.

If the quality comments that have been flagged are like what you see on /r/conservative , it might be that you subjectively see quality where others see something else.

Can you point at the well thought out rebuttal that have been victim of flagging?

You don't get it, or are not following through. The thread started with why a Conservative wouldn't post here. It's simple, it's not worth getting comments downvoted or flagged for having an unpopular opinion [not nationally but here].

You will say it's not a reasonable opinion, it's hate or fear and should be downvoted/flagged, but that is incorrect and exactly what leads to echo chambers. Which is ironic because HN is usually very pro-speech/thought... or used to be.

I can assure you plenty of conservative views get shared on HN, all the time. Saying otherwise means you must not be on here much.

It's just that defending the current administration, at this state, does take a level of bad faith that people on all sides of the political spectrum are sick of hearing. To imply it's only hardcore liberals flagging these comments is wishful thinking

"defending the current administration, at this state, does take a level of bad faith"

So every topic regarding current administration is a bad faith argument on the proponent side? Or just this one?

"If you talk to Trump supporters in real life, they are not having nuanced discussions about the state of our country, they are completely tuned out to what is going on."

Really, where exactly? I'd say 100% polar opposite. I live in a county that has voted for a R president almost every election, and the conversations are very different. There is a lot of disagreement, but it's usually the disagreement on the HOW not the WHAT.

Oh I'm sure they're having conversations. Those conversations are about how evil immigrants are, how tariffs are not taxes, what color MAGA hat to buy, and why Trump is the most honest billionaire in history. Conversations not tethered to reality.

Because Trump support is an identity, not a belief system.

I'm currently immersed in MAGA world (eldercare, siblings). Their daily media diet is 1984's Two Minutes of Hate all day long on repeat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate

I'm still unsure about the cultish aspects.

Habitual hate and anger are akin to addiction. Which may be sufficient to explain the behavior I'm seeing. (They really hate their perceived enemies.)

In favor of the cult theory, MAGA et al do check a lot of the boxes.

You should have seen how it was after most Americans could no longer deny the Nixon Malfeasance.

People started getting embarrassed real fast and even before he rode off into the sunset it was not easy to find somebody who would admit to voting for him.

And he got elected twice himself.

Basically it was so disgraceful that in less than a year you couldn't find anybody who ever admitted to voting for Nixon at all. Most voting Republicans actually had, at least the first time, but if anybody even indicated their tendency after that they were ridiculed by other Republicans like "how could you ever support such a crook?", not just from the Democrats. It was just too uncomfortable for a nation of overwhelmingly honest-to-the-bone Americans regardless of which party, nature took its course almost immediately and it was swept under the rug as completely as could be. Not everybody is honest to the bone of course, what you would sometimes hear instead of crickets was "No, I actually didn't vote that time" from some Republicans who still had the bumper sticker that said "Nixon's the One."

It was very much like a mass "suspension of disbelief" for at least a decade after which people acted something like "it was only the very elderly and uninformed who voted for Nixon and they're all dead now so no wonder you can't find someone who was proud to vote for him either time."

The primary motivation for Rupert Murdoch's creation of Fox News was to prevent the Republican party from ever suffering an embarrassing resignation like Nixon again.

Present the Republican base with an alternate reality where every accusation against a Republican is a witch hunt, no matter its veracity, and the base no longer has to feel ashamed supporting a crook. Instead, they can stand proud, knowing they support someone the "libs" hate.

Unlike the times Republican presidents have said it, this is truly a case of Mission Accomplished.

IIRC, Fox News accounts for +5 R nationally.

Plus the +5 R advantage due to misapportion...

It's a wonder that Democrats ever attain a majority.

And why most criticisms of Democrats (campaigns, messaging, policy, whatever) aren't even wrong.

> Trump supporters used to speak up on this site. Surely they still exist but all I hear is crickets

They are here. But their contributions are, let's say, not motivated by fact-based reasoning. Not surprising: it's very hard to defend what's going on in this country right now.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49545694

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49545156

1 is flagged

2 Is a statement with a link. What is wrong with it? https://news.gallup.com/poll/652523/americans-endorse-early-...

Requiring all voters to provide photo identification at their voting place in order to vote Democrats: 67%

#2 isn't really addressing the argument being made.

> The fact that reputable sources were not provided to justify the need for fixes has been reputable source enough.

The the question wasn't "what do people prefer" it was "what's the evidence this is a problem."

People wanting a thing doesn't necessarily mean the thing is is a problem. But further, what the Trump admin is doing isn't the thing being polled.

What's wrong with it is that it's a non-sequitur to the conversation at hand.

What's happening is new restrictions on mail in voting. A federal registry of citizens which the post office uses to decide who does and does not get a ballot and who's ballot is allowed to arrive to the elections office.

A more responsive link would be one that shows evidence of a large amount of mail in voting fraud or even a poll that shows the majority of people support federal checks and restrictions on mail in voting (though, I'd think that's not a good reply because it isn't actually evidence).

It's clearly a nuanced topic that requires debate in good-faith, no?

So why is it flagged and not debated? If all counter points are flagged, then there is no discourse. The only discourse is all the people who agree with each other.

It's not good faith to mott and baily, gish-gallop, and non-sequitur.

I've not seen a comment yet that is actually responsive to points being raised about why this action by the administration is a bad idea. Instead it's "Well, people want voter ID" and "Well because there's unlimited fraud in mail in voting and early voting".

What a lot of the flagged comments are (but I don't speak for all the flagging, I personally avoid downvoting or flagging myself unless something is very egregious) are bad faith.

It's not one sided, I've gotten into arguments about Biden/Harris when throwing critiques their way with diehard supporters. But frankly, from what I've observed it's a lot worse when it comes to Trump's actions. When he does something indefensible, like this incomplete citizen registration 2 months before an election, instead of addressing the action he just did, his supporters try and change subjects rather than justify this action.

The most charitable reading I have from one of his supporters is that this will stop non-citizens from voting in federal elections. But the issues with this they don't address, like the fact that a citizenship list doesn't currently exist and that the process of creating such a list is completely opaque, are simply never addressed. And even when "Ok, if it's such a problem, where's the evidence?" is asked, the only response is to change subjects.

That's not a good faith argument. That's not nuance. That's "I have an unfounded belief and rather than defend it, when questions get uncomfortable I'll rely on bad faith debate tactics to try and win the argument".

1 was not yet flagged at the time that I wrote that. Nevertheless, you can reconstruct what was written from the quotes in its responses.

> Which "side" has been fighting tooth and nail for unverifiable mail-in ballots > resisting all investigations of voting integrity?

Basically, the comment asserted that Democrats are "pushing" for mail-in ballots, despite the fact that many Republican-controlled states (notably Mississippi, which recently defended its mail-in voting law) also allow mail-in voting. The comment cast aspersions on the accuracy of mail-in voting, citing no evidence. The comment was apparently informed solely by partisan bias without any basis in the reality of the situation.

In short, it was not a good comment. Did it deserve to be flagged? Probably not. But it was certainly not a thoughtful, well-reasoned defense of the current administration's flagrantly illegal overreach. If this is the kind of comment that you want to see more of on HN, then we'll have to agree to disagree.

It's a spectrum, so we'll just debate what the votes are for.

Do I want to see more of them, probably not. Does it deserved to be flagged, absolutely not.

> Do I want to see more of them, probably not. Does it deserved to be flagged, absolutely not.

That's fine, but please don't play the martyr. You're supporting a president who is deporting people for constitutionally protected free speech. I think you'll survive a little flag here on HN.

>But their contributions are, let's say, not motivated by fact-based reasoning.

Neither are yours: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49546137

How does that contradict my point? 10 percent of Americans do not have acceptable ID and would be disenfranchised by Republican voter ID laws. Even free ID doesn't make the operation frictionless, as you still have to provide a birth cert or citizenship doc.

Don't tell me I'm "unfactual" while presenting this kind of weak sauce non sequitur.

>How does that contradict my point?

Your point was states do not give free IDs. That point is an objectively false point. It directly contradicts your point.

> 10 percent of Americans do not have acceptable ID

Stop moving goalposts.

>Even free ID doesn't make the operation frictionless, as you still have to provide a birth cert or citizenship doc.

No one made the claim the operation is frictionless, stop straw manning.

>Don't tell me I'm "unfactual"

You are unfactual as proved in the thread.

>while presenting this kind of weak sauce non sequitur.

It's not a non sequitur, it dismantles your false statements.

> Your point was states do not give free IDs.

No, it was not. Either you are deeply confused or responding to wrong comment.

> Stop moving goalposts.

This is not moving goal posts. This is precisely the point. Voter ID laws will disenfranchise legal voters. That's it. That's the point.

> No one made the claim the operation is frictionless,

Good. Then you acknowledge that legal voters will be disenfranchised?

>No, it was not.

Yes, it was.

>Either you are deeply confused or responding to wrong comment.

Stop projecting about being confused. Everyone can see where you poorly attempted to support your objectively false points.

>This is not moving goal posts. This is precisely the point.

The point was you thought IDs for voting were not free. That is false. Stop moving the goalposts.

>Good. Then you acknowledge that legal voters will be disenfranchised?

Non sequitur. Proving you're eligibility to vote is not disenfranchisement.

Incredible sense of deja vu. I feel like I was just having this same conversation with another user who has the mind of a 13 year old child.

> The point was you thought IDs for voting were not free

I guess you choose to dwell on this particular issue because it makes you feel better, but actually we're talking about Republican rules to restrict voting. The availability of ID is an issue in that discussion. Any friction involved in getting an ID, including but not limited to paying for it, will limited voting in practice.

> Proving you're eligibility to vote is not disenfranchisement.

Disenfranchisement is causing eligible voters to not be able to vote. Which is what happens when add requirements that people don't fulfill.

> Stop projecting about being confused. Everyone can see where you poorly attempted to support your objectively false points.

Oh okay.

>I feel like I was just having this same conversation with another user who has the mind of a 13 year old child.

You should stop debating with 13 year olds and losing.

>I guess you choose to dwell on this particular issue because it makes you feel better

I guess you choose to ignore this particular issue because it makes you feel like a loser

>but actually we're talking about Republican rules to restrict voting.

No we're not.

>The availability of ID is an issue in that discussion.

Glad that I cleared this up for you: every state has a free ID that is valid for voting. They are available to everyone.

>Any friction involved in getting an ID, including but not limited to paying for it, will limited voting in practice.

No it won't.

>Disenfranchisement is causing eligible voters to not be able to vote. Which is what happens when add requirements that people don't fulfill.

Glad that's not what's happening.

There's a voted-into-oblivion reply to this from someone trying to both-sides things "I don't want to hear about it when it was changed quickly for Covid too".

but it doesn't work...anything then was done under literally the same President we have today?

That's pretty damn hilarious: *don't complain to me about the Trump admin fucking with the voting system on short notice in 2026 since the Trump admin also fucked with the voting system on short notice in 2020!"

(At least there was a major national emergency going on that time...)

---

It's a point in favor of the "malicious" theory, though. Here's arguably the person who would have the most reason to not fuck with things last-minute, who complained at no end about the results, is now making his own last minute changes... hmmmm.... must still believe he got cheated, and is intentionally trying to cheat instead.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!... see only the Great Oz.

The current administration will just blame it on someone else, like they always do.

And who complains will get their funding withdrawn.

"I can't believe Obama did this to us while we were in the middle of fighting Joe Bidens war in Iran! It's almost as bad as Bill Clinton's darn Tariffs!" - Future Trump, probably

You're giving them too much credit. There is zero critical thinking happening.

I disagree. A lot of thinking went into this. It's not a dumb idea -- it's a very smart (in a very anti-democracy) way to try to subvert the midterms

This isn't a 'bad idea', this is a blatant attempt to at election fraud.

it's not a "bad idea", it's intentionally disruptive -- that's the point of it

not surprised that Trump Admin is trying to do this; it's a page out of their play dirty, break the law now and sort it out later once the courts catch up, approach to politics

but the fact that SCOTUS didn't shut it down is beyond the pale -- unconscionable

What business is it of the USPS except to transmit all mail regardless of purpose?

The fact that the USPS would notice elections were being conducted is perverse.

Yes - USPS should behave like a layer 3 network: moving mail pieces to destination addresses independent of source & destination.

Where elections probably matter to postal services is that they represent a particular shape of mail volume and network usage that may require management to reorganize pickup/delivery resources to meet delivery commitments.

So like spam mail, but much less volume?

You're missing the bigger picture.

New Mail Voting Rules Moved Forward Despite USPS Officials’ Concerns About Mass Disenfranchisement (https://www.propublica.org/article/mail-voting-usps-official...)

  In a March executive order, President Donald Trump directed the Postal Service
  to create the new rules, including requiring states to give USPS a list of all
  voters eligible to receive a ballot in the mail and requiring USPS to use those
  lists to determine which ballots get sent to voters.
  
  USPS officials were tasked with crafting the details of how the new system
  would work, including the creation of a new portal for states to upload their
  voters’ information and the back-end software that would allow mail delivery
  sites and local post offices to track, and potentially block, ballots
  entering into the mail on their way to voters.

The whistleblower is saying the rules are crafted so certain people don't get counted. Specifically, minorities, specifically, democrat minorities.

> The whistleblower is saying the rules are crafted so certain people don't get counted. Specifically, minorities, specifically, democrat minorities.

Well. Who could possibly have predicted this. /s

> The United States Postal Service has spent months developing a U.S. Federal Ballot Mail Portal to provide election officials with a simple, secure, and efficient way to share lists of individuals receiving ballots by mail in their respective states.

Why? Your job is to transfer pieces of mail from one place to another. Just continue that. Everything else is manufacturing a problem where there was none.

Edit: Spelling.

>Everything else is manufacturing a problem where there was none.

That's this administrations exact intended purpose for forcing this.

Their job is whatever the government tells them it is, things like this don't just spawn out of thin air, there's usually rationale for it[0].

The post office already does way more than you think it does. Like identity verification on behalf of the government and tracking which houses are considered "vacant" or not.

It would be nice to focus the USPS, but all these extra services have to be done by _some entity_, otherwise you can't have the final result. In this case, the result is a functional, auditable mail in ballot system

[0]: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/06/02/2026-10...

"Their job is whatever the government tells them it is"

Sounds like authoritarianism.

I'm wondering how easy the USPS is to route around.

In California's last election, there were 2,758 drop-box locations and 3,546 polling locations. In cities, these are often within walking distance. In rural areas, they might not be so convenient.

So it seems like, at least for returning ballots, any USPS snafus would affect rural voters (which skew Republican) more than urban?

Delivering is another question. I wonder if local governments could drop off ballots if they needed to?

No, the procedures are designed to reject more votes in blue areas, just like the procedures that somehow conclude that people named Williams, John, or Washington should be dropped from the rolls for being similarly named as other people named Williams, John, or Washington.

But suppose there are states that don't cooperate with that?

The postal service is run by the federal government.

And elections are supposed to be run by states...

We could probably get something rather similar to voting by mail without actually using the US postal service.

the procedurse are not designed to reject more votes in blue areas lol being involved at the organization forr 15+ years its always so funny to hear what ppl on this site cook up; i get a good 'what are they saying now on orange site' with my co-workers

Use ballot boxes -- those don't go through the USPS

Requires a bit more work for people but at least where I live there are many places you can drop off your ballot, including most public libraries.

The very sad state of the US democracy, especially how they do elections, was even fodder to a german language book "König von Deutschland" (King of Germany) by Andreas Eschbach.

In the fictive story, it is the year 2000. Some get the job to write a software to manipulate vote computers. Later, the same programmer was asked to manipulate also voting computers in Germany. This time, he tries to resist. They create a joke-party for the re-erification of the Monarchy and manipulate the vote computers so that this joke-party gets the majority. And that works. But no one believes him that the computers were manipulated and he really gets to be the new king of Germany.

That's all very fictive ... it's just that in the text you have lots of footnotes giving reference to ACTUAL problem with US voting devices ...

Also: in Germany the Chaos Computer Club once demonstrated that they could run chess on an already "certified to be safe for election" voting computer. That brought the end to these devices ... so now Germany is back to a state where your Aunt Mary can sit down with the paper ballot sheets, can recount and can inform herself that everything was right. Without the need of a CS degree, without knowledge about IT security, hacking, etc. Which is IMHO a general win to the democracy. Lay people must be able to verify results!

Given that they are dedicated to causing chaos in the midterms, how is it best countered? Whisper campaigns to tell all your friends to vote in person? When he loses, what stops him from putting troops in the streets? Is the recourse just wait until he goes? We all see what's happening, how do we meet the moment?

I'm skeptical that the federal government can be saved. I suspect we will experience a process of balkanization.

balkanization is an offensive word

So is "federal" at this stage.

> Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

Yes. That's the point. The administration doesn't care about fixing whatever hypothetical mail ballot fraud may or may not exist; they are doing this to inject chaos into the election results, giving them cover to claim any result they want or even to just throw out the results entirely. Catastrophic problems are the means to that end.

It isn't just injecting chaos, but instead is trying to engineer an outcome. Find every mechanism and group that is likely to vote against you, and do everything possible to disenfranchise those voters. They've already gotten a ruling that ballots received after a cutoff do not count, regardless of the reason, so now they're engineering assurances that they get to choose from where ballots can be selectively delayed.

Speaking of engineering outcomes, today I read:

“He had told me [before the election] he was going to unleash the ‘anomaly in the matrix,’ ” St. Clair says in championed documentarist Alex Gibney’s film, Musk"

> They've already gotten a ruling that ballots received after a cutoff do not count

Watson v. Republican National Committee seems to be the opposite of what you state: ballots received after election day can be counted provided they were postmarked on or before election day.

You're right, the 5-4 SCOTUS ruling this summer reversed the appeals court ruling, preserving states' rights to set laws that permit counting postmarked ballots -- if postmarked in time.

Curiously, the USPS changed when it postmarks mail this year, resulting in postmark delays. In Washington state, the number of ballots rejected for being late is up 32% compared to 2024.

And when it all goes to shit, they can just use that as evidence that mail-in voting shouldn’t have been allowed in the first place.

It is the same tired but sadly effective Republican playbook: take a mostly functioning if imperfect system, break it beyond repair under the guise of fixing or reforming it, use the ongoing disaster to argue that it should be dismantled, rinse and repeat until it’s unsalvageable.

It’s worth mentioning that destroying the USPS has been a largely bipartisan effort, for reasons I cannot understand.

Edit: when the PAEA passed in 2006, it had 410 “yes” votes. Not a single democrat, and only 20 republicans voted no. This was, and still is, the primary reason the USPS is no longer able to function.

That's a global thing. Postal services are very expensive public services. Low hanging fruit for cost savings.

That's the crazy thing about the US. Our postal service is, for some reason, not funded by taxpayer dollars, but also not allowed to run a profit, they are not allowed to change prices without congressional approval, and they must fund their pension for 75 years - well beyond any requirement anyone else in the US faces, to include both federal agencies and private orgs. If they didn't have that last requirement, they'd be solvent.

No tax funding, no profit and price controls are normal for a state owned company. In other countries the postal service is not expected to pay for itself all the way but subsidies are limited by law. The prices are supposed to be lower than market as a public service.

These aren’t state-owned companies, they’re federal services. It’s also, as stated, not how it works for any other org or business in the US. Maybe everyone else in the world has some kind of problem similar to this, but it appears to at least be a somewhat unique situation in the US.

> Low hanging fruit for cost savings.

None, since the USPS is not government-funded.

Exactly. It's incredible how partisan some peoples information bubbles must be to not see this for what it is.

All of these changes are based on the president making comments like the following:

> "the cheating on mail-in voting is legendary,"

Which he has attempted to prove going back years. And every time it's been found that it essentially doesn't happen. And I believe, the few instances of voter fraud that have been found have been majority republicans and not democrats as has been accused.

So to begin with, anyone arguing for these changes need to acknowledge the well established fact that there is effectively zero voter fraud at all levels throughout the country in anyway impacting elections. As has been investigated and shown time and time and time again. If they aren't beginning with the well established state of the world then they are in fact are the one entering with an extremely partisan hat.

Now if their argument is "yes it's true voter fraud has been investigated countless times, and continuously shown to effectively be smaller than a rounding error, does not impact elections, is know to not be a problem, but I still want to make sweeping changes right before an election." Then sure that's a point of discussion. Then I think the simple question then becomes "why"? But if they aren't willing to begin with an accurate discussion of the facts and state of the situation (there is no voter fraud problem), then any comment they make following that has little credibility.

Why is he pushing to outlaw mail-in voting when there is no issue with mail in voting? Is it because one party votes by mail more than the other?

Or the change in the date mail can receives a postmark? Previously mail was transported to the facility to the same day so would get postmarked that day. Now, as this year, mail won't get post-marked the day it's dropped in a mail box - so any zipcode's mail boxes can now be marked as being sent too late to count, even if they were dropped off before election day.

> While we are not changing our postmarking practices, we have made adjustments to our transportation operations that will result in some mailpieces not arriving at our originating processing facilities on the same day that they are mailed. This means that the date on the postmarks applied at our processing facilities will not necessarily match the date on which the customer’s mailpiece was collected by a letter carrier or dropped off at a retail location.

If the administration actually cared about getting an accurate vote, why aren't they opening more voting locations? Why don't they mandate one voting location per every x number of citizens? Why would the Department of Homeland Security decide who is allowed to get ballots via the mail?

If it's so bad, why has the administration failed time and time again to produce any evidence it's actually bad? If it's so horrible, and wide spread why is it impossible to find evidences that supports this? Or shows it overturning elections or anything close?

It's the same scheme. Make a bunch of baseless assertions, repeat them frequently enough and people in an information bubble will begin to believe it. And that's clearly what's happening here. Just like "we've won the war in Iran" 20 times now. And "Iran has agreed to peace deal where they surrender" 15 times now. And how every weekend for months there were claims about the work on Friday that somehow magically fell apart by Monday. And yet somehow there are still people who give these false claims, and the people claiming them, any amount of credibility.

Voter fraud is not a problem in this country. It does not rig elections, it does not sway elections. So sudden last min drastic changes in the voting process right before an election, by someone who has previously attempted a coup (not the protest on the capital but the actual coup attempt), has said they admire the leader of a country who dismantled its democracy (Orban) - and previously pushed the govt to make false claims of vote fraud to keep him in power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot

> The Trump fake electors plot was an attempt by U.S. president Donald Trump and associates to have him remain in power after losing the 2020 United States presidential election. After the results of the election determined Trump had lost, he, his associates, and Republican Party officials in seven battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin[1] – devised a scheme to submit fraudulent certificates of ascertainment to falsely claim Trump had won the Electoral College vote in crucial states. The plot was one of Trump and his associates' attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election.

Then, when that failed:

> Trump pressured the Justice Department to falsely announce it had found election fraud, and he attempted to install a new acting attorney general who had drafted a letter falsely asserting such election fraud had been found, in an attempt to persuade the Georgia legislature to convene and reconsider its Biden electoral votes.

Like I think there are people in such an information bubble that they aren't even aware these are well established facts. Not partisan talking points, but a recounting of facts of the lengths that have already been attempted to remain in power illegally. And now sudden sweeping changes to voting right before an election amid false claims of rigged elections.

Another reason is that if people only have one day to vote, it’s much easier to disenfranchise their vote just by delaying or inconveniencing them. Texas recently tried this by changing where people were allowed to vote, causing mass confusion.

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/politics/el...

In Georgia they passed a law making it illegal to hand out bottles of water to people in line to vote while simultaneously reducing polling stations in certain areas to ensure long lines.

He's spent years telling his supporters not to vote by mail. So during the election when there are problems with the mail, those will primarily affect the other party. That's enough to steal an election without more steps.

Meanwhile, the piece of excrement votes by mail himself.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/17/trump-vote-by-mail-...

Having bare minimum protections against invalid voters, illegal immigrants or otherwise, is a basic precaution that every country on Earth except America does. The honor system we have here is absurdly lenient. I understand the Democrat desire to oppose everything Trump proposes, but imagine if in The Netherlands you can waltz in and say you are this person or that person, without any ID check whatsoever. Europeans might not realize this but that is literally the American system.

I totally grant that the fraud Trump is claiming is way off the mark. But why not just... require ID to vote? At least in federal elections? The lack of verification is the exact reason why the lies continue

> But why not just... require ID to vote?

Among other things, consider https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...

> The lack of verification is the exact reason why the lies continue

I think the evidence suggests they are not particularly constrained by reality? Recall "They're eating the cats and dogs."

> imagine if in The Netherlands you can waltz in and say you are this person or that person

That's not at all how it works. Typically, you do need to present ID to register. You also need to verify your address on the day of voting. If someone does commit fraud, it's easy to detect: as soon as the real voter tries to vote, the system will detect a "double vote." The fact that this almost never happens suggests that there is not much fraud, if any. And the amount of fraud required to actually change an election result with this method would require a concerted effort of tens of thousands of people, all risking federal prosecution.

> that is literally the American system.

No. Please stop misrepresenting the facts.

> But why not just... require ID to vote?

There are lots of good reasons, which you are probably already aware of, including the fact that many people eligible to vote do not have the requisite ID and are unlikely to get it. My litmus test for supporting voter ID is that it is accompanied by (a) free, mandatory, and automatic national ID cards, and (b) national holiday on election days. Republicans won't support part A for their own ideological reasons, and moreover their purported effort to support voter integrity is not sincere: the goal is simply to prevent undesirable (i.e. non-Republican) voters from voting.

many people eligible to vote do not have the requisite ID and are unlikely to get it

Just trying to understand as a non-American: which people are eligible to vote, but are unlikely to get an ID?

Canadian here, so take with a grain of salt. Both Canada and the US don't have a national ID system, at all (short of a passport). A state/province issued driver's license is the default form of ID. If you don't have a driver's license it is very possible you don't have an ID.

Most (if not all?) states and provinces will have some form of "non driving" ID available if needed. However, it is optional, costs money and requires other documentation to get it, such as an original copy of a birth certificate.

It's not that uncommon for an adult to not have an official ID. Either they never had one or have lost theirs and they haven't bothered/can't afford to get a new one.

The argument is that Republicans are exploiting the fact that this will disproportionately affect Democratic voters. Would some Republican voters be turned away? Of course. Would more Democratic voters be turned away than Republicans? Very very likely, and that's the point. It's a net win for one party to enforce voting ID laws while also not supporting some sort of free/cheap universal identity system.

> It’s not that uncommon for an adult to not have an ID

It’s extremely uncommon.

You need an ID to buy beer, open a bank account, prove you are eligible for employment, pick up a prescription at the pharmacy, book a hotel room, the list is very long. You cannot function in society without some form of ID.

The idea that a large number of Americans are being disenfranchised because they don’t have ID is farcical.

> It’s extremely uncommon.

34 million people [1] or about 10 percent of the US population lack a form of ID that would be required under a voter ID law.

The fact that you assert otherwise, without evide, shows that you live in a privilege bubble. None of your friends lack an ID, so you conclude it's rare.

[1] https://voteriders.org/article/who-doesnt-have-an-id-in-amer...

Thank you for the link, it very much proves my point. Let me walk you through the claims with you one by one:

"Nearly 21 million voting-age U.S. citizens do not have a current (non-expired) driver’s license."

A driver's license is not the only form of ID permissible to vote. You can vote using other forms of ID. Additionally, most states allow people over a certain age to use an expired ID to vote.

"Another 12% (28.6 million) have a non-expired license, but it does not have both their current address and current name."

People move and people get married. The average American will move 12 times in their lives and get married at least once. These people will get their license updated. They have one in the first place that isn't expired, after all.

Again, you can vote using other forms of ID beyond a driver's license, and furthermore, a driver's license with an old address is still valid to prove your identity.

"Millions of Americans across political parties do not have a license."

Again, the fixation on driver's licenses is a canard. Millions of American's aren't eligible to drive, so you would expect them not to have driver's licenses.

"People with less education and lower annual incomes are more likely to lack a current driver’s license."

Yes, people who can't afford to own a car are less likely to have a driver's license.

"People with a disability are far more likely to lack a current driver’s license."

Wow, what an insightful finding. People that are not able to drive don't have driver's licenses.

Here's a fun quote from your own link that refutes exactly what you are claiming:

Only "nineteen percent of individuals without a driver’s license cite bureaucratic or economic factors as the reasons for which they do not have a license." The rest weren't interested, or weren't eligible due to legal difficulties.

That means that only 4 million of the 21 million people who don't have a license can't get a license for the reason you're claiming. That's 1% of the entire country.

In a nutshell, only 1% of Americans are too incompetent to figure out how to apply for a license or too lazy to stand in line and fill out the paperwork to get one. Everybody else either has one, has a good reason they don't want one, or should not have one.

And that doesn't even mean that these people can't vote, only that they don't have a driver's license. It's entirely possible those people have other forms of ID.

Open your eyes friend. People are disenfranchised everyday, but it isn't because the mean old DMV denied them a driver's license.

>Most (if not all?) states and provinces will have some form of "non driving" ID available if needed. However, it is optional, costs money and requires other documentation to get it, such as an original copy of a birth certificate.

False. Every state in the US has a free voter ID option.

You are missing the point.

Even if there is no financial cost, it requires documentation and time to get voter ID. It is not issued automatically. That's why 10% of the US population doesn't have form of ID that could be used to vote and will be disenfranchised under Republican voter ID requirements. Until that issue is fixed, voter ID is not something I can support.

>You are missing the point.

No I'm not.

>Even if there is no financial cost, it requires documentation and time to get voter ID.

Yes, you must prove your eligibility to vote.

>It is not issued automatically.

They are issued automatically after proving eligibility.

>That's why 10% of the US population doesn't have form of ID that could be used to vote

Correlation != causation

>and will be disenfranchised under Republican voter ID requirements.

No they won't.

>Until that issue is fixed, voter ID is not something I can support.

There are no issues to fix.

>and will be disenfranchised under Republican voter ID requirements.

Can you explain this further?

A person who can legally vote today, but in the future cannot vote because of election restrictions, will be disenfranchised. You are supporting election restrictions that disenfranchise 10% of the US population.

>>That's why 10% of the US population doesn't have form of ID that could be used to vote

>Correlation != causation

I never made a claim of causation. I just said that 10% of legal US voting-eligible citizens don't have ID and will therefore be disenfranchised by your proposal.

> They are issued automatically after proving eligibility.

That's not what "automatic" means.

>Can you explain this further?

Yes, voter ID laws do not disenfranchise voters. The Supreme Court agrees with this statement.

>A person who can legally vote today, but in the future cannot vote because of election restrictions, will be disenfranchised.

Voter ID laws are not "election restrictions" the same way as registering to vote is not an "election restriction."

>I just said that 10% of legal US voting-eligible citizens don't have ID and will therefore be disenfranchised by your proposal.

That's not what the stat says. Nowhere does it say 10% of "voter-eligible" US citizens don't have IDs.

>That's not what "automatic" means.

Wrong, that is what automatic means.

A significant fraction are non-whites.

Many who were born before segregation ended in the mid-1960s were not granted birth certificates, as their mothers were forced to use midwives during birth because local hospitals were whites only and turned them away.

See: https://atlantablackstar.com/2025/05/07/florida-woman-real-i...

See: https://chicagodefender.com/black-woman-born-during-jim-crow...

See: https://academic.oup.com/north-carolina-scholarship-online/b...

> as soon as the real voter tries to vote, the system will detect a "double vote."

And which of the two people are lying? Would you have to... verify ID to figure that out?

I'm assuming that your question is not offered in good faith, but just in case I'm wrong: no, you could just see where they live.

Literally, what the fuck are you talking about.

As in, please be more specific with your claims that we don't require identification to vote.

Because it strikes me as a very low effort Fox News talking point, not any reality.

Most states allow you to cast a provisional ballot on polling Day without an ID, but require that you return and present an ID to accept it.

But no state is accepting votes without identifying the voter. They just vary somewhat in what alternatives they accept.

Compare your statement to the info here and come back with something better: https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_identification_laws_by_state

I have never voted without being required to present gov issued ID. Ever.

The comparison to western European countries doesn't hold up. Speaking from Norway: yes, it's true you have to provide ID to vote, both in national and local elections. The difference is that obtaining ID is trivial, to the point where essentially everyone here legally has ID. I wouldn't be surprised if the most common way for someone not to have ID would literally be "all of it was in my luggage and the airline lost it", or some similar very temporary state. In the US, the people who do have ID do not even form a representative sample of the population as far as I understand

I can't speak for the Americans, but I would imagine there'd be far less liberal pushback against voter ID if everyone could trivially obtain it.

How's this for a compromise: republicans get voter ID laws, in return for a national, bipartisanly monitored program to ensure that anyone who wants it can trivially obtain ID. Once that's realized, the voter ID laws can kick in?

You need an ID to drive, buy alcohol, buy cigarettes, board a plane. And people manage to do all those things.

No, all people do not manage to do those things (even if they wanted to).

You can do all that with a driving license, but a driving license is not a proof of citizenship and thus of your eligibility to vote.

In Europe, you can't get a regular ID without being a citizen. So having an ID automatically means you're eligible to vote.

> In Europe, you can't get a regular ID without being a citizen. So having an ID automatically means you're eligible to vote.

Nitpick: E.g. Norwegian ID cards can be had by any legal resident. The card will say that you're not a citizen though, so your point about that stands.

Re driving license: Driving license is a valid form of ID for voting here. All eligible people are on the voting rolls automatically (unlike the absurd american system), and the driving license is merely used to prove you are who you say you are.

This is not true. For example not every citizen can vote (people under guardianship or criminals) and not citizens can vote in local elections in the EU, if they came from another EU country.

Yes. There are all kinds of edge cases.

The point I tried to make is that with the system we have here it's much less of a hassle to prove you're eligible to vote. The system wants you to be able to vote, and to be able to do that easily.

Yes, but a driver's license can be accepted as ID.

Just because a driver's license isn't proof of citizenship doesn't mean that it isn't sufficient, since it will have some identifier connected to the identity of the voter. You would show the driver's license, then the registrars would find your name on the list, strike it out, give your voting envelopes, and then you go wait for a private booth to become free and then you go into that booth and put your votes in those voting envelopes.

A Swedish driver's license doesn't mean Swedish citizenship. It can still be used to check somebody's identity. Citizenship is checked by seeing whether the person is on the voter rolls, not by their identity card.

Some of the Republican proposals would require a proof of citizenship at registration time. You would still be able to register without a passport but you need to take your birth or naturalization certificate. Not everyone has them at home so you might need to go to your parents place in another state or risk getting it mailed. Good luck.

The point is not making registration impossible, just harder and more complicated. When you combine it with voter roll purges the play is clear.

Get a biased commission to remove everyone named Jackson or Hernandez a couple months before the election because "there's too many people with that last name and officials might confuse them" or purge a whole district that just happens to be an opposing party stronghold based on a single voter fraud conviction.Do it silently without informing voters, and when they realize they need to register again they have to go through a complicated process designed to make them give up.

Rejecting IDs at the poll booth is actually pretty rare because it's so obvious. Real schemes are a bit more creative.

> Yes, but a driver's license can be accepted as ID

So what would that accomplish? The Trump playbook asserts that there is a massive conspiracy involving noncitizen voting. Their proposals involve proving citizenship to vote. And now your argument is to use ID that doesn't prove citizenship. Brilliant.

In my state government issued ID is used to verify who you are. You are then issued a ballot if your name is also in the poll book.

Your eligibility to vote and have your name entered into the poll book is determined by providing a Social Security number or birth certificate.

So yes, a driver’s license is sufficient ID to vote in many states.

> So yes, a driver’s license is sufficient ID to vote in many states.

At the moment, yes. Under Republican voter ID proposals that require proving citizenship, no. Having an SSN does not imply US citizenship.

Actually you need a REAL ID to board a plane now. 20% of americans don't have them. They're pointless, take a lot of time and effort to aquire and are needlessly expensive.

I don't have one because I have a passport.

> Actually you need a REAL ID to board a plane now.

If you don't have a REAL ID or passport, you can just pay a $50 fee and get on the plane anyway. So whatever the REAL ID proves cannot be essential to security.

In much of Europe you don't need ID for those, except a driving license, which happens to be an ID but primarily exists to prove you are qualified to drive. If you look young you are asked to prove your age if buying cigarettes or alcohol but the requirements for that are relatively low.

Until recently in the UK you did not need any ID to vote, that was introduced recently as an echo to the US stolen election conspiracy, as demagogues love to steal ideas from each other.

> imagine if in The Netherlands you can waltz in and say you are this person or that person, without any ID check whatsoever. Europeans might not realize this but that is literally the American system

This is of course not true, why say clearly incorrect things?

First, there is no "American system" as such, because every state is responsible for running elections, so there are 50 state systems in the US.

More importantly, I get my ballot in the mail only because I'm registered to vote at the DMV, you know the same agency that issues the very ID they check to make sure I'm elegible to vote.

You don't just "waltz in" to the post office or whever to get a ballot.

Voting systems in Europe differ by country, but for example here in Switzerland I just get my ballot in the mail, fill it in and send it back to get counted.

And of course Swiss Post just processes this as a regular piece of mail, routing it to the address written on the envelope, without any weird cross-tabulation against voter registers or barcodes…

Some years ago a postman in Spain was caught with a sack in his home with 3000 votes that never were delivered to their destiny. This happened many months after the election. Last year in December some thieves broke into a small village post office and stole the money and the sack with 124 mail votes that were found later partially burnt. The few voters involved were allowed to re-send his vote before the elections and an organization of 12 people were detained later for this an other assaults to post offices before the local elections.

So yes, mail voting has a few issues still, not a lot, but is not impossible to break. If every worker in the post office is from one party and nobody in that party votes by mail, bribing and corrupting the system is doable, and even easy; specially if your work depends on it.

If you do this in small populations or at scale you could easily remove enough votes from the system until winning the place by one single vote. If you are malignant enough you could even blame later millions of "lazy" people for not voting and laugh about it.

Mail voting depends on trusting what your postman is not a plant.

The GOP and Trump supporters have so far spent millions of dollars trying to prove voter fraud. Mike Lindell of my pillow has lost his fortune trying to prove it.

They didn't prove any of their claims, and several even went to prison for contempt because they refused to substantiate their claims in front of a judge.

HN rules says to be kind and not call names, but you are either willfully ignorant or a liar, and in both cases you are complicit in a soft coup attempt.

While voting by mail himself. Yes the hypocrite-in-chief. Rules for thee, none for me.

good thing it's completely illegal for the federal government to interfere with state voting proceedure

> For instance, the Postal Service has what the whistleblower claims is a "zero percent failure rate."

> Mail workers would scan a sample of a batch of mail ballots — about 400 out of a batch of 10,000 or more — to verify it matches what is in the federal mail ballot portal.

> Under the policy, if even one barcode on a single ballot in the batch doesn't scan properly or the information does not match, the entire batch would be rejected and returned to state election officials so the problem ballot could be addressed, and then the verification process would have to be started again.

That sample is wrong for statistics, 4% is literally not significant. It's also too much for sample controls

No one ever accused this administration of being competent.

maybe so, but it is very vocal about they are the most modest

This is not the job of the postal service, but of the government. There is zero reason to outsource verification, and the postal service ought to vehemently reject this attempt to shift responsibility. Though I guess they won't, seeing as they are gleichgeschaltet.

You realize USPS is the government right? It’s literally in the Constitution

> USPS is the government

The wrong government! Voter rolls etc. are state responsibilities, not a federal ones.

And please, don't spend a second entertaining any crocodile-tears and pearl-clutching from Republicans about how "maybe states don't have rights and need consistent standards" all of a sudden. Nobody with any good-intentions for reform would wait until right before a major election to do something crazy that could disenfranchise millions.

Ex: "Stop being so mean to Bob, he just wanted to help out with platform stability when he stole that SSH key to push an un-reviewed hotfix to prod while betting the company stock would crash on a gambling site."

Fallacy of composition. It would be factual to say that the USPS is part of the federal government, but then the statement becomes completely irrelevant.

And no, the USPS is not in the Constitution. Article I Section 8 gives Congress the power "To establish Post Offices and post Roads". They executed that power via legislation. The USPS didn't come into being until 1970, replacing the United States Post Office Department, a branch of the cabinet. The legislation creating the USPS says that it "shall not make any undue or unreasonable discrimination among users of the mails" -- what Trump has tasked it to do is in direct violation of that law.

Assuming they check 400 out of 10k, and assuming someone would want to cause any meaningful discrepancies >= 1% of the ballots, meaning 100 problematic ballots per 10k batch.

This system would catch it 98,3% of the time. Pretty good, I'd say.

Ok now what's the potential false positive rate?

1 million ballots at 10,000 per batch means 100 batches. It seems they will use 400 ballots from each batch as a sample, and if anything is wrong for one of those 400 sample ballots, then the entire batch of 10,000 is sent back. Some nefarious actor could find 100 messed up ballots and include one in each sample of 400, and viola! 100 ballots invalidates 1 million votes. That's quite a system they got there.

Maybe I'm stupid, but why would sending back mean invalid?

It gets sent back, it gets investigated and fixed, and back it goes.

Am I missing something?

Everyone wants a winner on the day, and if the votes are pushed back it goes into 'hanging chad' time, which some appointed judge can just decide if the votes are included / the winner.

I'd wager most of us are OK with it taking a few days. There's a (relative) few weirdos that get upset if they see the numbers change as votes continue to be tallied.

No, the verification they're doing is on the sending side, not receiving. The state sends people ballots, the USPS intercepts them and sends them back to the state if they find an issue.

IF this cycle of delays lasts long enough, then some people never receive a mail-in ballot, or receive it too late

Thanks for the correction! I misread the outbound vs. return mail details. I agree with you about the IF on the cycle of delays.

They only tested 400 out of 10,000, so there’s every chance when it goes back there’ll be another reason to reject it. You’re also assuming that the government’s data is accurate and the rejections are not disingenuous. If the ballots were actually accurate the state now needs to go through the process of proving that particular voter is eligible. Do state elections departments have the time and manpower to do all of that for however many get rejected? The goal is clearly to waste as much time as possible so the ballots don’t arrive on time.

They don't care if it's illegal. They'll do it anyway and trust in the tainted result being a fait accompli that the courts can't (or won't) resolve.

It's still funny thinking that there's people out there in 2026 who think that "it's illegal" will stop the Trump administration.

> good thing it's completely illegal for the federal government to interfere with state voting proceedure

Oh yeah that'll stop them.

voting by mail is pretty popular these days

https://electionlab.mit.edu/research/voting-mail-and-absente...

more controversy:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/us/mail-in-voting-states....

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/31/us/politics/postal-servic...

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/02/us/politics/postal-servic...

Change (chaos) is the biggest threat to election integrity. It creates "jump ball" situations where anything can happen.

Last minute rule changes: redistricting, ballot redesign / reissue, gear swaps, polling locations, etc.

Way bigger than electronic voting, which is what initially motivated by activism.

Source: am a recovering election integrity activist.

> One third of all Americans cast their ballots by mail

Damn, never thought it was this much! I thought postal voting was mostly for people living abroad and less-abled ones that couldn’t physically go to a voting station.

Is this common in other countries?

Yes, completely normal here in Switzerland. Approx. 90% vote by mail here [1].

[1]: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/how-the-world-s-most-f...

Voting by mail is, in the absolute, a bad idea, not because of fraud but because it enables vote buying: you can show someone who you are voting for, and thus receive a bribe for it. The "normal" way of voting in a booth removes that verification step and makes vote buying a fool's errand.

Hopefully, in a twisted way, the fact AI enables convincing fake pictures and videos makes this vote buying scheme unpractical now, but it was a vector of attack until very recently, especially with encrypted communication and cryptocurrencies.

Don’t you guys have many more referendums than other countries by nature of your direct democracy? At that point streamlining the process becomes crucial.

Yes, that's true, and we go to the polls on average four to five times per year. Indeed, this leads to making the process lean and efficient. However, this trusted process too is under pressure to change. Recently, voting via internet has been discussed, which could potentially undermine its trustworthiness.

Considering a mail-in ballot gets rid of ballot secrecy anyway, I don't see why they don't just allow online ballots cast with login.gov or whatever.

Mail in ballots don’t get rid of secrecy, unless the system has been tampered with, which you could also do with illegal cameras at in-person voting etc. Anonymous envelope-within-envelope is a pretty standard way to keep secrecy, and many states do it, like mine.

> Mail in ballots don’t get rid of secrecy

They mean voter buying cases, "paying you to confirm a vote for X" and see you check the card.

In ballot cabins the buyer can't come with you inside the booth to confirm, so your vote has verifiable privacy/secrecy.

It doesn't really solve all type of vote buying problems (like clientelism lists, etc), but removes that confirmation step.

Is that really a problem? Since there will be lots of evidence and criminals tend to fuck up quite a bit this should be well documented. Unless you think that those election fraudsters that buy tons of votes from civilians have better opsec than drug dealers and the like.

If a name and the address associated 'votes', how long before that initial vote is noted in the system? I'm assuming a situation in which there's fake slips out there, or a subsequent digital vote comes in. When is the discrepancy flagged?

OT: I solve the election puzzle:

Have anonymized, legally binding election programs. The voter gets two randomly selected programs. Basically bubble sort but with up and down vote counters.

You spend 30 minutes in the boot before voting and get paid for your time.

Voting doesn't work in a low-trust society. You can't trust the custodian of the digital system who tallies the votes. The problem is intractable.

The president, who is ultimately decided by the custodians of the voting system, is not going to order an audit of the voting system which made them president in the first place as that would paradoxically cast doubt on the president's own legitimacy. The incentives are firmly against this.

And look at the primaries; absolutely rigged. Nobody with power is asking for any audit...

Why is Mike Lindell broke now? Because he tried to prove voter fraud and failed miserably. He spent millions.

>And look at the primaries; absolutely rigged.

Any proof? Oh, right, "vibes".

True title: Whistleblower warns Postal Service's new mail ballot system has "potentially catastrophic problems"

Since everybody voted for Trump again, he just won't have a choice but to take a third term. It's what the people want! /s

Cue civil war?

Stipulating that the article is bollocks, you still have no guarantee that a ballot was marked without coercion applied to the voter.

This is why as much voting in person; on election day; at a polling place; behind a privacy screen; as possible is generally recommended.

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