USPO mail post office 2 bak
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this may become voter fraud 2020 BS node but see VOTE SUPPR 4 STEAL
see dejoy
see mike duncan
see vote by mail
SEE PVTIZATION AMAZON
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AN 1 26
Election officials from around the country gathered at a conference in Virginia this week, giving us — and one another — a chance to hear what they’re thinking and worrying about as they plan for the midterm elections this year.
*This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.
One of their most pressing concerns: the mail.
Updated guidance from the U.S. Postal Service about how it processes mail and when postmarks are applied has sparked widespread concern in recent weeks about whether more mail ballots will be at risk of ultimately not being counted.
Fourteen states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands count mail ballots received within a certain period after Election Day, as long as they’re postmarked by Election Day. In a notice in the Federal Register that took effect Dec. 24, the Postal Service announced that it may not postmark a piece of mail on the same day that it takes possession of it, which could affect ballots dropped in mailboxes on Election Day, for instance.
Speaking at the conference, which was organized by the Election Center, a nonprofit association of election officials, U.S. Postmaster General David Steiner acknowledged the new regulation had sparked “a lot of confusion,” and said it was meant to clarify existing postmarking practices.
Adjustments to the Postal Service’s transportation operations mean that some mail won’t arrive at a processing facility on the same day it’s mailed, according to an agency fact sheet. That means postmarks applied at the processing facility may not match the date the mail was given to a letter carrier or dropped off, the agency said, which is what’s raising concerns about whether some ballots mailed by the deadline could still not get counted.
Earlier in his career, Steiner was a tax accountant, he told the gathering, “and anyone that ever practiced tax accounting knows that there’s only one way to make sure that that tax return that has to be postmarked by April 15 is actually postmarked on April 15”: lining up at the post office and requesting a manual postmark.
Steiner urged the election officials in attendance to inform voters that they can request manual postmarks at post offices with a date that reflects when the ballot was mailed. He promised that the agency would continue to take steps to prioritize the timely delivery of election mail, but said voters need to mail ballots at least a week before the receipt deadline. “We want to make sure that every ballot is delivered, and mailing early is a big part of that,” he said.
Election officials in recent years have repeatedly voiced frustrations with mail delays and urged voters to cast their ballots earlier, so the current questions aren’t entirely new.
But they’re occurring now against a backdrop of rising concern over the federal government’s role in elections, and especially President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on mail ballots. Trump has suggested he might attempt to curb their use through an executive order.
If Trump, or any president, issues such an executive order, “have you gamed out what you’ll do?” Judd Choate, Colorado’s state elections director, asked a panel of postal officials following Steiner’s address. Colorado is one of several states where people vote primarily by mail.
Panelist Adrienne Marshall acknowledged she was asked the same question at a different event over the summer.
“Of course, by the Constitution … we are required to deliver the nation’s mail,” she noted.
Marshall said that, without her legal team there, she was “not sure” how exactly her agency would respond to a theoretical executive order, but said she believes any executive order on mail ballots would likely be aimed more at election officials than the Postal Service.
The Colorado Department of State said it’s prepared for various scenarios that might affect the 2026 election cycle, but a spokesman wouldn’t comment on specifics.
Another session at the conference aimed to prepare election officials for potential election interference, covering a range of scenarios from how to handle Justice Department and congressional observers to the implications of placing polling sites or ballot drop boxes on federal property.
At a session with an FBI representative, election officials raised questions about the threats against them and election workers, a constant refrain since the 2020 presidential election.
And at a session with two members of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, Vice Chair Thomas Hicks, a Democrat, told election officials to take every opportunity to educate members of Congress about election needs. He noted that two long-serving members of Congress who were instrumental in passing the landmark Help America Vote Act of 2002 — Rep. Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, and Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican — are retiring after this year, leaving what he described as “a huge, huge void, and that’s a bipartisan void.”
Election officials’ list of worries, in other words, remains long.
*Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s editor-in-chief and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Carrie atclevine@votebeat.org.
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.
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gmail 12 25
Dear MoveOn member,
Shawn from RuralOrganizing.org here. Threats facing the U.S. Postal Service are ramping up. Just this past week, news broke that Amazon—USPS's biggest client—is considering cutting ties and not renewing its partnership, which would be a huge financial blow to the Postal Service and would hurt our communities who rely on the USPS for medications, food, voting, and more.1
And it doesn't stop there. Amazon is also considering launching a rival delivery service that would privatize our mail and put the USPS further in crisis.2 This is exactly what Donald Trump wants to happen—to have our Postal Service dismantled and sold to the highest bidder. Amazon would just be laying the groundwork.
Right now, the USPS has the responsibility to serve every single resident in this country equally, regardless of where they live. But a private company wouldn't have that same obligation, which could drive up costs for everyday Americans—not only in rural communities, but small towns too.3}:
–Shawn Sebastian, RuralOrganizing.org
Sources:
- "Amazon in discussions with USPS about future relationship," Reuters, December 4, 2025
- Ibid.
- "Who Would Pay the Biggest Price for Postal Privatization?" Institute for Policy Studies, April 2025
- "Americans see many federal agencies favorably, but Republicans grow more critical of Justice Department," Pew Research Center, August 12, 2025
- "Trump approval rating ticks up to 41 percent: Survey," The Hill,December 9, 2025
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5640218-trump-approval-rating-ticks-up-survey/
- "Millennials trust the postal service more than Amazon," CNBC, January 24, 2020
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/24/millennials-trust-usps-more-than-amazon-morning-consult-study.html
- "Exclusive: Amazon targets as many as 30,000 corporate job cuts, sources say," Reuters, October 28, 2025
- "Lawsuit seeks records related to Amazon worker deaths," New Jersey Monitor, November 26, 2024
https://newjerseymonitor.com/briefs/lawsuit-seeks-records-related-to-amazon-worker-deaths/
- "Amazon Prime Day is full of 'fake sales,' lawsuit alleges," USA Today, October 20, 2025
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/10/16/amazon-lawsuit-fake-prime-day-sales/86728601007/
- "USPS Privatization Would Cost Rural America More Than Mail," Jacobin, February 26, 2025
https://jacobin.com/2025/02/usps-rural-areas-services-privatization
- "USPS strikes deal with Elon Musk's DOGE team for reform help," Reuters, March 14, 2025
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an 6 25
Alarm raised as Trump admin's potential 'endgame' for the postal service revealed in memo
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raw story
Exclusive: Memo exposes DOGE's potential 'end game' for U.S. Postal Service 6 25
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AN 525
'A blatant conflict': Trump just made 'aggressive step' toward fundamentally changing USPS
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an 10 24
Arizona was once a deep-red state where Sen. Barry Goldwater and his successor, Sen. John McCain, were regarded by fellow Republicans as the gold standard for conservatism. But Arizona has since evolved into a swing state.
Arizona Democrats are winning a lot more statewide races than they were 30 or 40 years ago, and far-right MAGA Republicans like Kari Lake have been openly disdainful of the Goldwater and McCain conservatives who once dominated the state.
Arizona is among the battleground states where former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have been especially aggressive in their campaigning. And a contentious U.S. Senate race that puts Lake against Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona) will be closely watched on Election Night.
READ MORE:Man charged for shooting at Dem field office had 120 guns, 250K bullets and grenade launcher
According to Phoenix's ABC 15 News, fire and police officials are investigating a fire in a U.S. Postal Service mailbox that included some mail-in ballots. Arson is suspected.
The Phoenix Fire Department, in an official statement, said, "Approximately 20 electoral ballots were damaged, along with additional miscellaneous mail.
"What led to the fire is not yet known," ABC 15 News reports, "but Phoenix Police Department says Phoenix Fire Department's Arson Investigation Taskforce is performing a criminal investigation with postal inspectors and police. ABC 15 reached out to election officials for information impacting those whose ballots may have been damaged."
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer said his office is "waiting for details from law enforcement."
READ MORE:James Carville is 'certain' Harris will win — Here are 3 reasons why
Richer told ABC 15 News, "We encourage all voters who used that mail box in the last 36 hours to check the status of their ballots at https://BeBallotReady.Vote. Successful delivery is usually reflected on that website within 72 hours. Voters should be aware that tomorrow, October 25, is the last day to request a replacement ballot."
READ MORE:'Within two seconds': Trump vows to fire special counsel Jack Smith if elected president
===
mma
October 11, 2024, edition of Newsmax's The Rob Carson Show
HANS VON SPAKOVSKY (GUEST): Well, it's because the left has just been pushing it relentlessly. And you have to wonder, well, why are they doing that? Why do they want people voting by mail instead of in person? Well, it's because they combine that with the fact that they want it legal to engage in what they call vote harvesting, what I call vote trafficking. They want to be able to send their, political guns for hire, their campaign staffers to voters' homes to pressure and coerce them when they're voting their absentee ballot to offer to deliver their absentee ballot, which means you're putting a very valuable commodity into the hands of people who have a stake in the outcome. And that's why there are so many absentee ballot fraud cases in the database we maintain at the Heritage Foundation of proven cases of election fraud.
But, look, even apart from fraud, what you just talked about, after the last presidential election, 2020, the US Election Assistance Commission issued a report on that election and they said that 90 million absentee mail-in ballots were sent out to voters by election officials across the country. Only 70 million came back. Now, yeah, maybe some people asked for them and then decided not to vote them. But that, you know, that would make me pretty concerned about voting through the mail.
...
VON SPAKOVSKY: About a month ago, there was a joint letter sent to the US Postal Service by the two leading national organizations of election officials, It's the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Elector Records, complaining about how the Postal Service had mishandled mail during the primaries this year with long delays in the delivery of mail, delays that caused ballots to come in after the applicable deadline. So again, look, you're just foolish voting by mail — unless you absolutely have to because you're too physically disabled to make the polling place.
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an 9 24
'It’s a disgrace': This Trump appointee is causing major anxiety in the presidential race
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an 11 23
in a time of historic distrust in government, the United States Postal Service has accomplished something extraordinary: it remains a universally beloved federal agency. Second only to the Parks Service in public favorability (a jaw-dropping 77% approval rating, per Gallup), USPS is arguably also the most frequently-interacted-with component of the federal government: packages and letters are delivered to Americans’ mailboxes six days per week. But these warm feelings – already under threat by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s continued destructive leadership – could quickly chill if the Postal Board of Governors has its way.
At least four times per year, the Board (the governing body that votes on DeJoy’s agenda and has the sole power to fire him) holds an open session meeting, its sole formal contact with the public. In recent years, these meetings have concluded with a well-attended public comment period, where in-person and virtual attendees have excoriated DeJoy for embracing a privatization-friendly agenda. Just this year alone, public commenters at Board meetings have decried the mail slow downs and price hikes, demanded changes to DeJoy’s gas-guzzling and union-busting fleet plan, raised serious concerns about transparency of DeJoy’s facility consolidation plans, and pushed DeJoy to expand community services offered at the post office.
The future of the people’s most treasured public institution depends on public participation and feedback
But when the Postal Board of Governors met this week for their final open session of the year, there was one major difference from its previous quarterly meetings: virtual and remote public comments were, without explanation, banned. This abrupt new barrier to public accessibility led the number of public commenters – which in recent meetings has been a double-digit tally – to drop to 4. The decline in attendance was also likely compounded by an unexplained shift in the meeting time: whereas past meetings have been held at 4:00pm ET, Tuesday’s session was held at noon – the middle of the workday.
The Board’s decision to not allow virtual comments at the November 14th meeting follows another alarming recent attempt to suppress public input. At the August 2023 meeting, each public commenter was allotted only 25 seconds to speak, in sharp contrast to the typical 3 minute time limit. And past meetings were not beacons of accountability, either. The Postal Governors never responded to any comments raised by the public, and the comment period itself was always excluded from the official publicly available USPS recording of the formal session.
But next year, the Postal Board’s accountability problem will get even worse. During Tuesday’s meeting, Postal Board Deputy Secretary Lucy Trout explained, starting next year, the Postal Board will only hear public comments once per year in November. In other words, though the next three Postal Board meetings (February, May, and August 2024) are ostensibly “public sessions,” members of the public will have no opportunity to inform the Postal Board about their concerns until a year from now.
And it’s not as if postal workers, customers, and public advocates don’t have anything pressing to alert the Board about. On the contrary, DeJoy has continued to advance a destructive agenda that includes:
- Five successive postage rate increases, which have risked driving away business and failed to improve USPS financial standing, despite DeJoy’s promises.
- A 10-year stealth privatization plan that is being advanced with zero opportunities for public input and would increase delivery times, slash 50,000 jobs through attrition, and cut operations at more than 200 post offices and sorting facilities, which could devastate rural and Indigenous communities.
- A next-gen postal fleet contract with Oshkosh Defense that is nearly 40% gas-guzzler and 100% built with non-union scab labor. UAW workers from Oshkosh have regularly attended postal board meetings (including Tuesday’s) to call for an investigation into the company’s union avoidance scheme and for the Board to rebid a new, union-built contract.
- Failure to protect USPS staff from a dangerous summer heatwave that killed one postal worker, even after members of Congress urged improvements to the USPS heat safety protection plan and letter carriers alleged their managers were routinely falsifying safety documents.
- Refusal to support alternative revenue sources that could strengthen USPS, such as postal banking, grocery delivery, or electric vehicle charging stations.
President Biden has utterly failed to hold DeJoy to account for any of this, instead inviting him to White House stamp ceremonies and staying silent as the Postmaster General laughably reinvents himself as a “Biden ally” to credulous reporters. This is particularly egregious given the President’s power to nominate members of the Postal Board of Governors:
- Biden has inexplicably failed to name replacements for two Trump-appointed Governors – including DeJoy-supporting Democrat Lee Moak – whose terms expired last December. This has allowed Moak and his Republican colleague William Zollars to stay on the board for nearly a full year (their holdover terms will expire on December 8, 2023) and continue occupying seats that Biden has been statutorily allowed to fill.
- The Save The Post Office coalition has endorsed former Congresswoman Brenda Lawrence and postal expert Sarah Anderson – two strong critics of DeJoy’s leadership with decades of actual postal experience and policy expertise – for these positions. Biden has yet to indicate he will nominate anyone to these vacancies.
- Though Biden has already nominated five of the Board’s nine governors (on paper, enough to fire DeJoy), at least two of his picks have been DeJoy backers: Democratic ex-GSA head Dan Tangherlini (who approved Trump’s lease of D.C.’s Old Post Office Building) and Republican Derek Kan (a former Mitch McConnell/Elaine Chao advisor). As I’ve written before, Biden’s choice to nominate Tangherlini and Kan (instead of two anti-Dejoy reformers) squandered a key opportunity to finally give the Board a pro-reform, anti-DeJoy majority.
The Postal Board’s restrictions on public comment are unacceptable. They must reverse course by allowing both in-person AND virtual public comments at ALL open sessions next year, and take further steps to improve accountability by responding to public comments and posting recorded comment sessions to the USPS website. Congressional Democrats and the Biden administration must publicly call out this shameful barrier to transparent government and fast-track filling the Moak and Zollars Postal Board seats with anti-DeJoy, pro-accountability reformers.
The future of the people’s most treasured public institution depends on public participation and feedback–that’s how public service works.
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https://boingboing.net/2023/03/01/u-s-post-office-orders-9250-electric-vans-and-14000-charging-stations.html
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https://www.alternet.org/postmaster-general-to-be-fired/
ev fleet a go?
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https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/louis-dejoy/
The outrageous story about the Postal Service too many know nothing about
Louis DeJoy is plotting more moves to destroy the Postal Service — he must be stopped
Thom Hartmann and Independent Media Institute February 12, 2022
The Republicans are about to win a major battle in their war on electric vehicles, this time with the second largest vehicle fleet in America owned by the US Postal Service. It's an outrageous story that most Americans don't know a thing about.
Transportation, after all, is the single largest source of global warming emissions from the United States. And the Post Office once thought they could do something about it.
To understand what's going on with the Post Office right now, you first must know the backstory that, it seems, most media outlets aren't interested in discussing. It's an issue that's hitting millions of Americans right now.
One of our kids, for example, recently became the first member of our family to buy a fully 100% electric car. She was so excited and has loved it driving around Portland…until she had to drive to another state for a conference, when she discovered what a problem America not having an electric charging infrastructure causes.
The way to solve this problem, of course, is to have a substantial and massive increase in electric vehicles and that's exactly what the Post Office set out to jump-start back in 2006.
Transportation, after all, is the single largest source of global warming emissions from the United States. And the Post Office once thought they could do something about it.
Things were going well for the Post Office in 2006.
They were making money and had a surplus. They were therefore seriously considering replacing a large part of their fleet—the largest fleet of civilian vehicles in the nation—with electric and hybrid vehicles.
It would be a mighty boost for the electric car, and a huge slap in the face of the fossil fuel barons who had an outsized say in the Republican Party.
On May 17, 2006 Walter O'Tormey, the Post Office's Vice President, Engineering, unveiled a new hybrid gas/electric mail delivery vehicle in Boston to an audience of "nearly 100 industry representatives, environmentalists, and Postal Service employees," saying:
"As an agency that delivers mail to 145 million businesses and households six days a week, drives approximately 1.1 billion miles a year, and consumes more than 125 million gallons of motor fuel annually, we are in a unique position to demonstrate to the public and other businesses the growing viability and positive environmental and energy-savings benefits of alternate-fuel technologies."
In their 2006 annual report the Postal Service openly bragged about their ambition to move away from relying entirely on fossil fuels:
"With more than 216,000 vehicles, the Postal Service has the largest civilian fleet in the United States.We continue to evaluate various fuel types and alternative fuel vehicles including hybrid trucks, hydrogen fuel cell vans, electric step vans and liquid natural gas delivery vehicles."
If the Post Office pulled off a massive transition away from fossil fuels, it would jump-start the then-new electric, hybrid and fuel cell technologies, paving the way for wider use, a large national electric "refueling" infrastructure, and a significant reduction in greenhouse gasses.
Americans were excited by the possibility. Speaking on behalf of a coalition of mayors from all parts of the country to the World Congress on Information Technology annual conference in Austin on May 6, 2006, Austin Mayor Will Winn proudly announced:
"Transitioning the Postal fleet to plug-ins would serve as a springboard for the commercial production of delivery vehicles that could be extended to a wide variety of delivery services across America.
"The commercial market would also provide the economic certainty needed by automakers to make the production investments necessary for the mass production of plug-ins.
"The plug-in technology is available right now and represents a realistic near-term solution to the serious problems of over-reliance on foreign oil, out of control gasoline prices, as well as greenhouse emissions."
Given that postal vehicles typically have a 30-year lifespan, this would produce a huge tilt in the balance of alternative-versus-fossil-fuel vehicles on the road.
But the possibility of that transition happening to the nation's largest vehicle fleet was, in a word, intolerable to the morbidly rich rightwingers who'd made their fortunes drilling, refining, shipping and selling fossil fuels, particularly oil, diesel and gasoline.
The Post Office had to be stopped, and Republican Congressman John McHugh (NY) was just the man to do it. He'd been a member of the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and was deeply in the pocket of right-wing interests.
As Wikipedia notes in an exercise of gentle understatement:
"[McHugh] was chairman of the Oversight Committee's Postal Service Subcommittee for six years and worked to pass legislation to significantly reform the U.S. Postal Service for the first time since it was demoted from a Cabinet-rank department with passage of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (Pub.L. 109–435) in 2006."
ALEC, which writes corporate-friendly legislation and relies on its membership of Republican lawmakers around the nation to pass that legislation, just happened to have a model 2006 bill known as the Unfunded Pensions Liabilities Act, which called on state governments to account for exactly how they plan to fund future retiree benefits.
Adapting that ALEC concept to the Post Office, McHugh's bill was passed by a voice vote in a Republican Congress and signed by Republican President George W. Bush. There is no record whatsoever of who voted or how they voted on the legislation.
It was preceded, however, by a virtual waterfall of op-eds and PR efforts by groups affiliated with the Koch network including the Reason Foundation, the National Taxpayer's Union, and the CATO Institute.
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What the law did was ram a poison pilldown the throat of the Post Office.
It required the USPS to pre-fund its Retiree Health Benefits Fund for seventy years into the future, forcing the Post Office to take the money they planned to spend on electric vehicles and set it aside for the health benefits of future retirees who weren't even born yet (and should be eligible for Medicare, anyway).
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It's an obligation that no other private business or government agency has ever had to comply with before.
Costing the Post Office $5 billion a year, it succeeded in stopping their plan to electrify their fleet dead in its tracks.
And it set it up more cleanly for eventual privatization, once enough infrastructure like postal drop boxes and million-dollar high-speed sorting machines was destroyed—a processReagan called "Starve the Beast"—that "customers" were complaining about the service and public opinion finally agreed the Post Office would work better in private hands.
Reagan had tried to do the same thing to Social Security and the IRS, and Trump doubled down on that plan, offering tens of thousands of staffers early retirement to gut both agencies; they're now so hobbled by underfunding and worker shortages that Social Security disability claims can take two years, and extremely wealthy people are no longer generally audited at all because of the cost and manpower needs determined by their complexity.
Which brings us to Louis DeJoy.
The Post Office is finally on the verge of getting out from under that $5 billion-a-year prefunding burden so they can now start buying that new fleet they proposed in 2006.
Postmaster General DeJoy was strongly encouraged by the Biden administration to give the contract to a company that would manufacture electric and electric/hybrid vehicles.
But DeJoy essentially told Biden to go screw himself: he's going to buy fossil-fuel vehicles for 90% of the fleet instead.
The Washington Post laid it all out in the open to an article last week titled: Biden Officials Push to Hold Up $11.3 Billion USPS Truck Contract, Citing Climate Damage, noting:
"The Biden administration launched a last-minute push Wednesday to derail the U.S. Postal Service's plan to spend billions of dollars on a new fleet of gasoline-powered delivery trucks, citing the damage the polluting vehicles could inflict on the climate and Americans' health.
"The dispute over the Postal Service's plans to spend up to $11.3 billion on as many as 165,000 new delivery trucks over the next decade has major implications for President Biden's goal of converting all federal cars and trucks to clean power."
And it's not just the White House that's outraged. CNN reported yesterday:
"Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat who chairs the House subcommittee that oversees the Postal Service, called for DeJoy's resignation.
"'Postmaster General DeJoy's plan to spend billions on brand new gas-powered vehicles is in direct contradiction to the stated goals of Congress and the President to eliminate emissions from the federal fleet,' Connolly said in a statement. 'If Mr. DeJoy won't resign, the Board of Governors has got to fire him -- now.'"
Because Republican senators are holding up confirmation of Biden's Postal Board of Governors' appointees, DeJoy can't be fired by the current Trump-appointee-dominated board, a fact that Senator Sheldon Whitehouse pointed out last week, demanding the Senate move the Democratic nominees forward over GOP objections.
But DeJoy is itching to sign the contract for all those gas and diesel vehicles, and he still has the power to do so.
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So, now that the possibility of electrifying the nation's (now second) largest fleet of vehicles is pretty much dead and they're planning to go ahead with fossil fuels, Republicans in Congress are fine with eliminating the retirement prefunding dead weight on the Post Office.
The vote in the House this week was 342-90 to end the prefunding requirement and give DeJoy the money to buy the gas-powered vehicles. Now it goes to the Senate, where the AP noted:
"Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said he expects his chamber to 'move quickly' on the measure. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he's planning a vote before a recess that starts after next week. The bill has 14 GOP sponsors and, with strong Democratic support expected, seems on track to gain the 60 votes most bills need for Senate passage."
When asked Wednesday night on MSNBC why Congress had crippled the Post Office with that bizarre prefunding requirement in the first place, Senator Peters—one of the truly good guys in the US Senate—answered that he had no idea.
As is the case with most members of Congress; the pre-funding was essentially slipped into the bill at the behest of the fossil fuel industry and, at the time, got virtually no publicity. Thus, I tweeted him:
It was incomplete on my part to miss the privatization bonus in the tweet, and the vendor will supply gasoline vehicles as well, but you get the point.
Like so many other weirdnesses in American politics, when you pull back the veil you find the hands of a fossil fuel industry that values profits and right wing ideology over the future of our children, our nation and the planet.
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https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/dejoy/
pilot pgm
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dejoy still up to no good
senate committee approves 3 Biden nominees for USPS board — setting the stage for a Democratic majority
April 29, 2021
A Senate committee voted in favor of President Joe Biden's three nominees for governing board overseeing the U.S. Postal Service (USPS).
According to the Associated Press, the Senate
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https://www.mediamatters.org/sinclair-broadcast-group/sinclair-broadcast-group-spreads-debunked-project-veritas-disinformation
no lnx vid pix
Sinclair Broadcast Group is spreading misinformation from the far-right group Project Veritas about Michigan ballots -- even though the premise behind the claim was debunked the same day as Sinclair began spreading it.
On November 4, Project Veritas published a video which included a conversation between the discredited organization’s founder, James O’Keefe, and an anonymous “whistleblower” whose voice is altered. The anonymous person alleges, without evidence, that the post office they supposedly work for in Traverse City, Michigan, was backdating mail-in ballots to make it look like they were received by Election Day on November 3 when they were actually collected November 4. The video attempts to make this person look more legitimate by showing blurred photos of what appears to be a U.S. Postal Service ID card.
Both PolitiFact and the Record-Eagle, a local newspaper based in Traverse City, debunked the premise central to these allegations the day after Project Veritas released its video. PolitiFact, citing city and county elections officials, explained that “the postmark on a ballot in Michigan isn’t relevant to whether or not the ballot gets counted. That’s because ballots in Michigan must have been received on Election Day in order to have been counted. ... The postmark date is not a factor.” The Record-Eagle also explicitly stated that “this backdating narrative could not have impacted the local election”:
“We already counted all the ballots received by 8 p.m. and they’re all secured, so we’re not counting any late ballots. So it doesn’t even matter if they did that, because it’s not going to affect anything,” said Bonnie Scheele, Grand Grand Traverse County Clerk.
Ron Krumrie, union vice-president, confirmed the video does use the name of a current Barlow Branch supervisor and does depict a postal worker badge.
Krumrie echoed Sheele’s assessment, saying no such scheme, if attempted, could not have succeeded in getting late ballots counted.
In Michigan, it is arrival time, not postmark date, that determines the cut-off.
“Absentee ballots had to be addressed to whatever town office the voter is registered in, and they had to be in the hands of the precinct by 8 p.m. Tuesday night,” Krumrie said.
Tracy Wimmer, the secretary of state’s director of media relations, dismissed the video’s claims.
“Postmarks on ballots don’t matter in Michigan because they have to be physically received by 8 p.m. on Election Day,” she said in an email. “Any ballot that someone attempted to turn in yesterday, regardless of the postmark, would be rejected.”
Despite multiple postal and election officials debunking Project Veritas’ claims, Sinclair still published and spread an article by conservative political writer Ellie Bufkin uncritically repeating the far-right group’s unfounded fraud allegations:
The nation is now in the third day of waiting for a result on the highly contentious presidential election, reports of irregularities among ballots and concerns over fraud have been shared in multiple states.
Project Veritas, a conservative news outlet, published a video late Wednesday in which an unidentified person claiming to be a Michigan postal worker alleged that postal marks were being altered to show that ballots arrived before the Nov. 3 deadline.
Veritas’s report was similar to several other accusations across the country that alleged ballot irregularities, most of which would swing in favor of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. Key battleground states were called for Biden Wednesday, including Michigan and Wisconsin, but as of Thursday, President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign has requested a recount in Wisconsin and filed a suit over reports of fraudulent vote counts in Michigan.
This right-wing election disinformation was shared on dozens of local Sinclair TV station websites across the country.
Sinclair Broadcast Group articles uncritically repeating Project Veritas claims about Michigan ballots
The article was also shared on at least 20 Facebook pages belonging to Sinclair-owned or -operated stations.
Sinclair stations sharing articles pushing false Project Veritas claims on Facebook
Additionally, at least two Sinclair stations broadcast the Project Veritas allegations on their local news programs. WPBN in Traverse City covered the allegations at least five times -- though unlike the Sinclair article, it mentioned both that the claims were unverified and that according to Michigan law, this alleged scheme wouldn’t work.
Video file
CitationFrom the November 5, 2020, edition of WPBN's 7&4 News at 11PM
AMANDA SKRZYPCHAK (ANCHOR): Accusations made in a video interview by Project Veritas has launched an investigation by the U.S. Postal Service.UpNorthLive News has not been able to independently confirm the authenticity of the interview or video, and will not air it at this time. However, this is video of the Traverse City Barlow Branch, where the video claims a postal supervisor instructed employees to take mail-in ballots received on Wednesday and postmark them Tuesday, November 3. According to Michigan law, ballots have to be in the clerk's office by 8 at night on Election Day. A communication spokesperson for the Postal Service sent us this statement saying the postal service “is aware of the video, which has been referred to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Office of the Inspector General.”
WSBT in South Bend, Indiana, likewise mentioned that the Project Veritas allegations were unverified, but it failed to include an explanation that these claims would have no effect on the election even if they were true.
vid CitationFrom the November 6, 2020, edition of WSBT 22 First in the Morning 6am
LEANNE TOKARS (ANCHOR): The inspector general is investigating an allegation of voter fraud involving mail-in ballots in Michigan. Federal investigators arrived at a post office branch in Traverse City yesterday. The investigation comes after a conservative group called Project Veritas posted a video that implied postal workers were backdating mail-in ballots. Now in that video, a postal supervisor allegedly instructs employees to take ballots received Wednesday and backdate them with a Tuesday postmark. Nothing in this claim or video has been independently verified.
Project Veritas has released multiple videos after Election Day that attempt to discredit how the Postal Service is handling mail-in ballots, usually by claiming that postal workers are backdating ballots received after November 3. So far, the group has targeted Michigan and Pennsylvania with this narrative and also released a secretly recorded video that purports to show a postal worker in Nevada offering ballots to a Project Veritas operative. These post-Election Day videos are heavily edited, short, and offer no corroboration, but they have already received widespread attention from right-wing figures -- including Rush Limbaugh, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and Donald Trump Jr. -- who are citing them as evidence to falsely suggest significant voter fraud is happening in swing states. Project Veritas, in the meantime, continues to beg for tips from supporters about alleged voter fraud.
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/federal-judge-orders-us-postal-service-to-sweep-their-facilities-for-unsent-voting-ballots-and-send-them-immediately/
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/hanging-chad/
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/federal-judge-invokes-extraordinary-measures-to-ensure-on-time-delivery-counting-of-ballots/
ct/scotus record mixed?
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odd timing?
an 1020
https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/an-agency-trump-created-just-debunked-his-lies-about-massive-mail-in-voting-fraud/
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/trump-lawsuit-to-stop-nevada-mail-in-vote-count-condemned-as-obvious-and-desperate-suppression-attempt/
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dejoy
https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/usps-still-hasnt-reversed-election-mail-slowdown-despite-multiple-court-orders-attorneys-general/
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/this-single-sentence-from-a-federal-courts-ruling-exposes-the-dark-conservative-plot-against-voting/
cody f
Three judges on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday stayed an injunction by a lower district court that sought to protect the voting rights of Texans voting by mail.
The majority decision, written by Judge Jerry E. Smith, blocked the lower court's orders to Texas Secretary of State Ruth Hughs that would have required officials to notify Texans whose mail ballots were rejected because of an apparent signature mismatch and give them an opportunity to address the issue. Under current law, election officials can reject a mail ballot if they determine that the signature does not match the voter's signature on file; officials must notify the voter of the rejection within 10 days. But even then, the voter may not be given an opportunity to fix the problem.
As the result of an ongoing lawsuit, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas ordered Hughs to adopt procedures that would allow voters to address a signature mismatch, or to stop rejecting ballots based on signature issues altogether. Judge Orlando Garcia said the existing policy "plainly violates certain voters' constitutional rights." But the Fifth Circuit rejected this injunction, saying Hughs should follow the law as written — rejecting ballots without necessarily giving voters any due process.
In a remarkable sentence encapsulating the emerging right-wing view of voting rights, the decision explained:
Because Texas's strong interest in safeguarding the integrity of its elections from voter fraud far outweighs any burden the state's voting procedures place on the right to vote, we stay the injunction pending appeal.
While this may sound like dry legalese, it's a dramatically bold and unambiguously dangerous idea. The court's claim is that "any burden" on the right to vote can be justified if it is meant to restrict the opportunity for voter fraud.
This notion sounds like a farcical caricature of Republicans' views on voting, but it's an actual statement from right-wing judges defending a right-wing administration. It falls apart under even the mildest scrutiny though. While preventing voter fraud is surely a legitimate interest of the state, there must be some reasonable limits on how far the government can go in trying to prevent it. Is it reasonable to, say, create so many obstacles to voting that 10,000 fewer ballots will be cast in an election if doing so will also stop a handful of fraudulent ballots?...
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seems more snafu, grow pain than evil
https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/pennsylvanias-rejection-of-372-000-ballot-applications-bewilders-voters-and-strains-election-staff/
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/judges-used-to-stay-out-of-election-disputes-but-this-year-lawsuits-could-well-decide-the-presidency/
Throughout American history judges have generally tried to avoid getting involved in political questions, including litigation about elections. They followed Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter's famous advice to avoid “embroilment" in “the political thicket" of “party contests and party interests."
This tradition began to erode in the 1960s, when courts took up cases involving legislative redistricting and gerrymandering.And since the Supreme Court's 2000 Bush v. Gore decision, which effectively decided that year's presidential election, political parties have increasingly turned to the courts in search of electoral advantage.
Prior to 2000, an average of 96 election law cases were brought every year in state and federal courts. By 2004, that average jumped to 254, most of them filed at the state level.
This year, the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project reports that as of Oct. 15, 365 such cases have been filed in 44 states.
Many of those cases arise from state efforts to respond to the difficulties of campaigning and voting during the COVID-19 pandemic. Democrats generally have supported efforts to making voting easier, such as in Michigan, where they were successful in getting the courts to extend the period during which late-arriving mail ballots could be legally counted. Republicans generally have opposed those efforts.
When the voting happens
This year's election-related litigation began to emerge in the spring as states tried to cope with the pandemic's first wave during the political primary season.
Those cases fell into two major categories. Some were filed to try to change the date when people voted in presidential primaries. Others focused on how people voted in those primaries and the general election.
Sixteen states changed the dates of their primaries, and most did so without resorting to litigation.
Nonetheless, some states faced lawsuits over the timing of presidential primaries, filed by political candidates and public officials, including in New York and Wisconsin.
In April, Andrew Yang, then a Democratic presidential candidate, sued the New York State Board of Elections after it effectively canceled the Democratic presidential primary. He argued that doing so was illegal since he already had met the requirements for having his name to appear on the ballot. One month after the suit was filed, a judge agreed with Yang and ordered the state to proceed with its presidential primary.
Wisconsin proved to be a particularly fertile ground for litigation over its April primary. In one case, the Wisconsin legislature prevailed in challenging the governor's executive order postponing in-person voting.
In another Wisconsin case, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the Republican National Committee and the state party when it blocked a plan to extend the period to return absentee ballots in the primary election.
How the voting happens
In cases concerning the ways people could vote,Democrats in Kansas sued to force Secretary of State Scott Schwab to implement a law permitting voters to cast ballots from any polling station within their home county. Schwab argued that the complexity of developing necessary administrative regulations prevented him from doing do so in time for this year's election.
A state court judge dismissed the suit but said that county officials could, if they wished, implement the Kansas Vote Anywhere Act on their own without waiting for the state to act.
In Ohio, a federal judge also dismissed an American Civil Liberties Union suit seeking to extend the deadline for absentee voting for the state's presidential primary and move from in-person to universal mail balloting. The plaintiffs claimed that the state's inefficient absentee-voting system would disenfranchise people through no fault of their own unless the deadline was changed and that in-person voting during the pandemic would pose a health risk.
Focus on mail-in ballots
Many of this year's election-related cases have focused specifically on mail-in ballots. This is not surprising given President Donald Trump's well-publicized but baseless attacks on voting by mail.
Some of this litigation has been brought to expand opportunities to cast that kind of ballot or to ease the requirements for doing so. Other cases have been filed by groups opposing such changes and raising concerns about voter fraud.
Recent rulings in some of those cases have made voting by mail more difficult; others have made it easier.
In the first category, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Oct. 5 that South Carolina could require people voting by mail to have another person sign their ballot as a witness. However, over the objection of Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, the court declined to invalidate the more than 20,000 ballots that had been cast prior to its ruling.
Three days later, in a victory for Wisconsin's Republican Party, a federal appeals court upheld that state's requirement that in order to be counted, mail-in ballots must be in the hands of election officials by 8 p.m. on Election Day.
But, also on October 8, Justice Elena Kagan turned down a request from Montana Republicans to block some counties from proactively mailing ballots to voters starting the next day.
In another victory for supporters of mail balloting, a federal judge in Pennsylvania dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Trump campaign seeking, among other things, to block the use of drop boxes as receptacles for mail ballots.
Full employment for election lawyers....
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https://www.mediamatters.org/voter-fraud-and-suppression/james-okeefes-videos-attacking-mail-voting-minnesota-fall-apart-after
no lnx many pix
James O’Keefe’s videos attacking mail-in voting in Minnesota fall apart after being spread by right-wing media
WRITTEN BY ERIC KLEEFELD
PUBLISHED 10/07/20
Serial political fraudster James O’Keefe, founder of the right-wing group Project Veritas, is now facing the collapse of yet another of his purported “sting” videos — this time, involving accusations of ballot fraud and bribery in Minneapolis. But the fraud and bribery might really be coming from Project Veritas itself.
About Project Veritas
Project Veritas’ basic modus operandi is to secretly record videos, then deceptively edit and release them in order to create a “gotcha” moment for right-wing media. These attempts often backfire. [Business Insider, 11/28/17]
Project Veritas has a long history of distorting videos, claiming they show things they do not actually show, and deceptively editing secret recordings to make the subjects look worse. Project Veritas also has a history of targeting low-level volunteers and staff, then attributing uninformed statements to organizers higher up in authority. [Media Matters, 10/6/14]
Project Veritas refuses to ever release unedited videos, only clips. “We treat our raw video as the same as a reporter’s notebook and we do not release it,” said Project Veritas spokesman Neil McCabe. [Snopes, 10/01/20]
Another O’Keefe stunt from earlier this year involved supposed inflation of coronavirus death statistics in New York City. Despite containing no evidence or meaningful information, it was widely picked up in right-wing media. [Media Matters, 4/30/20]
Project Veritas’ latest scheme is a project codenamed “Diamond Dog” meant to discredit mail-in voting. The intention of this scheme is “literally to get Trump reelected,” as a source said. [The New Republic, 8/3/20]
Project Veritas’ latest claims
O’Keefe’s first new video claimed to implicate an “Ilhan Omar connected Ballot Harvester.” The video featured Snapchat videos by a man referred to as “Liban Mohamed” with absentee ballots collected in his car. Though he is described as “connected” to Omar, he identifies himself in an audio clip as working for his brother Jamal Osman’s successful campaign in an August special election for the Minneapolis city council. [YouTube, 9/27/20]
A second video claimed to show an exchange of $200 for a single vote. Both videos relied heavily on the statements of a community “insider” named Omar Jamal. O’Keefe claimed that “our sources inside the Somali community here allege that the architect of this pay-for-votes scheme is none other than U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.” [YouTube, 9/28/20]
The new video releases appear to have been promoted beforehand with Trump campaign officials. The latest Project Veritas release was teased on Twitter by Donald Trump Jr. and businessman Mike Lindell, Trump’s Minnesota campaign chair. [Election Integrity Partnership, 9/29/20]
The videos’ release may have been moved ahead of schedule to distract from The New York Times’ reporting on Trump’s personal finances.“Mr. O’Keefe’s promotional posts had said the video would be released on Monday, but Project Veritas released it on Sunday instead, a few hours after the publication of The Times’s investigation. … Many of the same accounts that had shared promotional tweets also shared the video as soon as it was released, moving it quickly into Twitter’s trending topics alongside The Times’s tax investigation.” [The New York Times, 9/29/20]
Fact-checking Project Veritas’ claims
The collection of absentee ballots by a designated person who delivers them to be counted, which right-wing media refer to as “ballot harvesting,” was legal in Minnesota for a period this summer, during which the man in the Snapchat videos claims to have been working. The Minnesota Supreme Court reinstated a limit on collecting ballots in early September, after the state’s primary election had already taken place. [Star Tribune, 9/9/20]
Project Veritas has provided no direct evidence for any vote-buying. Any such allegations in the video “come solely from unnamed people who speak with Project Veritas operatives in the video and whose faces are not shown.” [The New York Times, 9/29/20]
Now, “Liban Mohamed” has come forward — though his name is actually Liban Osman, and he was not working for Rep. Ilhan Omar’s campaign. Osman also said that Project Veritas misleadingly edited together two different videos he had taken a month apart from each other, as he boasted of his brother’s campaign and its successful fundraising against a wide field of 11 opponents. [KMSP-TV, 10/5/20]
An Omar campaign spokesperson confirmed that Liban Osman had never worked or volunteered for Omar’s campaign. [Snopes, 10/1/20]
Liban Osman says Project Veritas’ main “insider” source, Omar Jamal, had offered him a bribe of $10,000, to be paid by Project Veritas. Osman says Jamal wanted him to say he was harvesting ballots for Rep. Ilhan Omar, and claims Jamal said to him, “They [Project Veritas] are not after you or your brother. Why are you defending her?” Project Veritas is denying the accusation. [KMSP-TV, 10/5/20]
Video file
CitationVia Fox 9, KMSP-TV, October 5, 2020
KMSP-TV in Minneapolis reports that the video showing an exchange of $200 was actually Project Veritas' source, Omar Jamal. “But two sources tell the FOX 9 Investigators the man is a relative of Omar Jamal, and that during the encounter outside Cedar Riverside Apartments, it is Jamal who is handing the man $200 which was intended for the family of a sick relative in Somalia.” [KMSP-TV, 10/5/20]
Project Veritas’ source Omar Jamal
Omar Jamal claims to be the chairman of “Somali Watchdog Group,” but the organization does not appear to exist. It is also unclear if Jamal is at all associated with the Ramsey County Sheriff Department, which he claims to be working for in the Project Veritas video. “Further, according to records obtained by the Daily Dot, Jamal isn’t currently a U.N. Permanent Representative to the Federal Republic of Somalia, which he has also claimed on LinkedIn.”[Daily Dot, 10/1/20]
Jamal has also admitted the video purportedly showing an exchange of $200 for a ballot was a staged dramatization. “I think that incident was one that was depicting how [cash-for-ballot] works,” he said in an interview with a Somali American TV program. He also admitted that he had never met anyone who had received cash in exchange for a vote. [Sahan Journal, 10/1/20]
Project Veritas is now promoting a GoFundMe for their “#BallotHarvesting Insider Omar Jamal,” with a goal of $500,000. The money is allegedly to support efforts to “further expose potentially more election fraud come November.” At time of writing, it has raised just over $31,000. [Twitter, 9/28/20]
Right-wing media and President Donald Trump spread the latest apparent hoax from Project Veritas
On September 28, O’Keefe appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, to promote the video. [Fox News, Hannity, 9/28/20]
Video file
CitationFrom the September 28, 2020, edition of Fox News' Hannity
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones hosted O’Keefe to talk about the story. [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 9/28/20]
Video file
CitationFrom the September 28, 2020, edition of InfoWars’ The Alex Jones Show
O’Keefe was interviewed by former National Rifle Association spokesperson Dana Loesch. [YouTube, 9/28/20]
O’Keefe also appeared on The Larry Elder Show. [YouTube, 9/29/20]
Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon hosted Project Veritas’ Neil McCabe to discuss the story on his War Room: Pandemic podcast. [Twitter, 9/28/20]
Far-right blogger and white nationalist sympathizer Michelle Malkin hosted state Rep. Steve Drazkowski (R-MN) to discuss the Project Veritas video. [YouTube, 9/28/20]
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Glenn Beck promoted the video on his Blaze TV show in a segment titled “Vote Buying In Ilhan Omar’s District?” [YouTube, 9/28/20]
screen grab
[New York Post, 9/27/20]
screen grab
[Breitbart, 9/27/20]
screen grab
[National Review, 9/27/20]
screen grab
[The Gateway Pundit, 9/27/20]
screen grab
[The Post Millennial, 9/27/20]
screen grab
[RedState, 9/28/20]
screen grab
[The Epoch Times, 9/28/20]
screen grab
[CBN, 9/28/20]
screen grab
[The Washington Times, 9/28/20]
Right-wing YouTuber Tim Pool: “Trump Proven RIGHT After Video Shows Voter Fraud By Ilhan Omar Supporters, He DEMANDS Investigation” [YouTube, 9/28/20]“Trump Proven RIGHT After Video Shows Voter Fraud By Ilhan Omar Supporters, He DEMANDS Investigation” [YouTube, 9/28/20]
Pro-Trump cartoonist Scott Adams: “Trump Taxes, Mail-In Ballot Fraud Scandal, How Trump Wins Without Trying” [YouTube, 9/28/20]
Trump amplified the claims at his campaign rally in Duluth, Minnesota. “And what about Omar? Where she gets caught [ballot] harvesting. What the hell is going on? I hope your U.S. attorney is involved,” Trump said, as the crowd chanted, “Lock her up.” [Vox, 10/1/20]
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), in a now-deleted tweet: “Project Veritas offers further evidence of the need to ban ballot harvesting. It's not a partisan issue. It's been abused to help both R & D candidates, including in North Carolina & California. Please help by telling your congressional rep to pass our bipartisan bill HR8285.” [Twitter, 9/28/20]
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Gabbard posted a new tweet after the latest allegations broke about the videos:
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https://www.mediamatters.org/james-okeefe/james-okeefe-cycle-after-sean-hannitys-eager-promotion-another-project-veritas-video
no vid
fox News star Sean Hannity hosted disgraced right-wing fabulist James O’Keefe last week to promote his latest video “sting,” which seeks to aid President Donald Trump’s reelection by undermining the credibility of U.S. elections. The video has since been discredited -- an incredibly predictable outcome for anyone remotely familiar with O’Keefe’s oeuvre -- but Hannity hasn’t bothered to let his audience know, because he’s a shill for the president.
Every news cycle about an O’Keefe “sting” video is the same (though every cycle about one of his efforts fizzling before launch is hilariously different). O’Keefe’s Project Veritas group targets a Democratic candidate, a progressive group, or a media outlet. His operatives use hidden cameras and leading questions to elicit responses from low-level participants that he can decontextualize and distort. His team edits together the footage into a video which he presents as damning evidence of widespread illegal or unethical behavior. The published result gets blasted through the right-wing infrastructure of social media storytellers, digital media outlets, and talk radio, moving up the food chain until it reaches Fox and the president. And then people take a closer look at the video and its participants and point out the particular ways in which O’Keefe has misled the public this time.
O’Keefe’s latest target is U.S. elections. His latest video is a two-part Project Veritas investigation into a “Cash For Ballots Voter Fraud Scheme” in the Somali American community in Minneapolis. And his latest wild allegation is that his team has identified “the biggest systemic voter fraud smoking gun in American history.”
There is no systemic voter fraud in the U.S. elections and mail-in voting is a secure way to cast ballots, despite the right-wing disinformation campaign to the contrary. And the videos in question are a mishmash of decontextualized snippets, some from anonymous individuals, which ultimately provide no “hard evidence of cash in exchange for votes.” Nonetheless, the video had rocketed through the right-wing noise machine to Hannity’s radio show, his Fox show, and the president in one day.
On his September 28 broadcast, Hannity presented O’Keefe as a credible investigator who had documented corruption. O’Keefe’s video, Hannity warned, “should scare every American.” After acknowledging that “Fox News has not independently verified the contents of the video,” he proceeded to show part of it to his millions of viewers. He brought on O’Keefe himself, who claimed he had produced “incontrovertible evidence” of “voter fraud” that is “all on tape.” “I hope the attorney general of the United States is watching tonight and will watch that video,” Hannity concluded at the end of the interview. “We need to get to the truth."
[vid]
and then the Project Veritas claims started to fall apart.
The “insider” at the center of O’Keefe’s tale who explains the purportedly crooked “scheme” is Omar Jamal, a local gadfly who presents himself as a leader in the Somali American community but has few apparent followers. Subsequent reporting revealed he isn’t a credible source, and he reportedly backtracked on key claims he made to O’Keefe in a subsequent interview -- notably, that he had ever seen cash exchanged for ballots. In fact, he “specifically alleges that he thinks a clip that purports to show a ‘ballot harvester’ paying a voter $200 in exchange for a vote was instead a demonstration of how that process allegedly works” -- a statement he may have been in good position to make, since he is reportedly the “ballot harvester” shown in the clip.
The local Fox owned-and-operated affiliate, KMSP, added to the implosion on Monday with an interview with Liban Osman, another subject of the Project Veritas videos. KMSP provided at least one clear-cut case of Project Veritas deceptively taking Osman out of context to suggest he had been offering money for votes, and Osman told the station that Jamal had offered him $10,000 from the group if he were to claim to be harvesting ballots for Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN). “Project Veritas denies manipulating or misrepresenting its undercover video and claims it never offered Liban Osman $10,000,” KMSP reported.
Hannity’s audience hasn’t heard any of this from him, and they shouldn’t expect to. The Fox star knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s been promoting O’Keefe’s purported bombshells for years, despite his lack of credibility, because it’s propaganda intended to benefit the Republican Party, and Hannity is a Republican Party propagandist.
In this case, O’Keefe is the leading edge of an insidious and wide-ranging GOP plan to damage the credibility of absentee and mail-in ballot counts, suppress as many Democratic votes as possible, and undermine confidence in the election results. As part of that effort, Project Veritas has “worked to infiltrate the groups of volunteers and paid canvassers who collect absentee and mail-in voter applications from low-income, elderly, and minority groups--a perfectly legal practice in most states that conservatives have tried to label as nefarious ‘ballot harvesting,’” The New Republic reported over the summer.
That means we can expect more dubiously edited videos from O’Keefe’s crew in the month before the election -- and there’s little doubt he’ll be back on Hannity’s show to talk about it. That’s Fox’s role in the scheme -- an outlet willing to feed its viewers nonsensical, overblown attacks on the election process to benefit the president.
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https://theintercept.com/2020/10/05/iowa-absentee-ballot-requests-trump/
not supreme?
IN 2018, Democrats won three of Iowa’s four congressional districts, picked up five seats in the state House, and lost the governor’s race by less than 3 points. The state has only trended more Democratic since, giving the party real hope that its six electoral votes could wind up in the camp of Joe Biden and that its Senate seat, now held by Republican Joni Ernst, could flip to Democrat Theresa Greenfield.
It may all hinge, however, on an absentee ballot snafu affecting tens of thousands of voters that the party is scrambling to rectify.
in July, the top elections officials in Linn and Johnson counties went ahead and began mailing out absentee-ballot request forms with some voter information already filled in, like names and dates of birth. Crucially, voters need to know their voter ID number. Most don’t, and Linn County Auditor Joel Miller had the state’s vendor fill it in for them. Republicans protested, and courts sided with the GOP, saying that Miller’s decision to proceed with the mailing violated a “clear directive” from Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate.
More than 100,000 absentee ballot requests have already been invalidated in several Iowa counties. In late August, judges ordered two Iowa counties to invalidate at least 64,000 ballot requests, siding with a challenge brought by President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign and the GOP, which have been filing similar lawsuits nationwide. About 50,000 voters in Linn County and at least 14,000 in Woodbury will be informed that their absentee-ballot requests won’t count and that anyone who still wants to vote by mail in November will have to send in a new form in order to receive their ballot. In a separate case in Johnson County, home to the University of Iowa, more than 92,000 ballot request forms were voided.
Miller told Bleeding Heartland, a blog covering Iowa politics, that his research indicated that neither the secretary of state nor the legislature had the authority to stop his mailing; Miller was simply “trying to make it easy for people to vote while reducing their exposure to others in a pandemic,” he said. The Iowa Democratic Party, along with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, are suing Pate for issuing a directive saying that county auditors could only distribute blank absentee-ballot request forms to voters. Democrats argue that using these prefilled request forms, which included some personal information and voter identification numbers to make the process as easy as possible, was “entirely lawful under the Iowa Code and the Iowa Constitution.” No hearing has yet been set.
Then, early last week, a fourth judge sided with the Trump campaign and Republican Party, upholding a recent law making absentee voting harder in Iowa. The law, which was pushed by Republican state lawmakers this summer, complicates and slows down procedures for processing absentee-ballot requests, making it needlessly difficult for county auditors trying to get voters their ballots in time.
The opinion released last Monday was in response to a lawsuit filed by the League of Latin American Citizens of Iowa and Majority Forward, which asked the court to stop the enforcement of HF 2643, an appropriations bill that included a last-minute provision requiring county auditors to directly contact a voter within 24 hours of receiving a ballot request with missing information. Instead of using information that’s readily available in the voter registration database to correct incomplete forms, election officials will be expected to contact the voter by phone, email, or letter to get them to provide the information.
Democratic Party officials are scrambling to make contact with the voters who think they have an absentee ballot on the way, concerned that whatever communication the county sends them won’t get through. Reaching each person is an expensive proposition but not impossible.
The three Iowa counties hit with the Republican suit are tasked with tracking down all the voters who aren’t aware that their absentee-ballot request was rejected, and walking them through the process again — with just a few days until absentee ballots start getting mailed out. Iowa state Sen. Zach Wahls said Democrats are concerned with the changes happening so close to the presidential election, which was a “proactive decision” by the Trump campaign to “create this confusion among voters who they knew would be disproportionately … Democratic.” He noted that the counties encompass primarily urban areas, more densely populated areas that have been concerned about the spread of the coronavirus.
J.D. Scholten, who’s competing in a tightening race against Republican state Sen. Randy Feenstra in the state’s 4th Congressional District, a deep-red district he nearly flipped in 2018, said the Woodbury County Democrats have already hired someone to track down the ballot requests.
THE STATE’S shifting politics are the result of a number of structural factors, some within the control of Trump and some not. His trade war with China has hit Iowa hog farmers and soybean growers directly, though its political effect is balanced by public support for confronting China’s trade practices. Perhaps more damaging has been the plummet of corn prices. In 2012, prices hit $8 a bushel, but by 2014, they had fallen to less than $4. As the pandemic hit, prices fell further, approaching $3 a bushel this past spring. They’ve since rallied, recovering some losses, but the volatility and the collapse led to the shuttering of many of the state’s ethanol plants. Iowa has outsized political power as a result of hosting the first-in-the-nation caucuses — in which Biden finished fourth — and used that political clout to shape the country’s ethanol policy, requiring retail gasoline sellers to mix their product with corn-based ethanol, creating a market for the crop. That, in turn, has reshaped Iowa’s economy, which now devotes a significant amount of its acreage to growing corn designed specifically for producing ethanol. With the plants shut down, farmers have little recourse, creating misery and economic disruption.
That misery comes on top of the derecho
in August, devastating 14 million acres of farmland, some 40 percent of the state’s output. With 140-mile-per-hour winds, the storm was highly unusual. Whether it wasfueled by climate change is hotly debated, but extreme weather events and economic destruction tend to do political damage to incumbents. The state has also seen more than 1,000 deaths fromCovid-19 and more than 90,000 cases....
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omg
some county he size of sm state?!
Gov. Greg Abbott Is Closing All But One Dropoff Location For Mail-In Ballots In Each County
Abbott is closing all but one ballot drop-off location in each of Texas's 254 counties, severely limiting voting access.
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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/the-propaganda-war-against-voting-by-mail/
no lnx
THE FIRST Tuesday in April, as the gravity of the COVID-19 pandemic was becoming all too real, Americans got a scary glimpse of what Election Day in November might look like if the virus were still spreading. We also got a big, loud, ugly preview of the 2020 voting wars.
The state of Wisconsin had no business holding an election on April 7. Sixteen other states had bumped their primary dates back, hoping to give election officials time to adjust to the drastic new conditions and allow more voters to cast their ballots safely by mail. Governor Tony Evers had issued a statewide stay-at-home order. In Milwaukee alone, at least 51 people had already died from the new coronavirus. And so many poll workers were refusing to show up that the city, home to Wisconsin’s largest concentration of voters of color, would be hard-pressed to open even a handful of polling places, never mind the usual 180. “We are over our heads in chaos,” Neil Albrecht, Milwaukee’s election chief, told The Guardian a few days before the voting was slated to start.
Evers, a Democrat, tried to push the election date to May 23 and send mail ballots to all registered Wisconsinites. But he waited too late. By the time Evers called the state legislature into emergency session the week before the polls were to open, asking legislators to approve the delay and green-light an all-mail ballot, President Donald Trump and his right-wing amen chorus had begun to paint voting by mail not as a public-health necessity during a pandemic, but instead as a Democratic plot to “rig” the 2020 elections—“perhaps the worst of all the scams perpetrated through the COVID nightmare,” as Trump fan Laura Ingraham put it to viewers of her Fox News Channel show.
In addition to the Democratic presidential primary that was to take place on that day, there was also an election for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
“A lot of people cheat with mail-in voting,” the president said on April 4. “In Wisconsin what happened is I, through social media, put out a very strong endorsement of a Republican conservative judge, who’s an excellent brilliant judge, he’s a justice. And I hear what happened is his poll numbers went through the roof, and because of that, I think they delayed the election.”
So Wisconsin Republicans forced the show to go on.The Republican leaders of the state Assembly and Senate both gaveled in their special sessions, then gaveled them out within seconds. When the governor responded by issuing an executive order to delay the primary, the majority-Republican state Supreme Court stayed it on the night before the election.
Voting went smoothly enough in the state’s smaller counties and towns, where white Republicans predominate and polling places had no lines. But in the cities, it was an unholy mess. Lines were so long in Green Bay that some people couldn’t vote till after midnight. In Milwaukee, the scene was downright eerie; some poll workers wore makeshift hazmat suits fashioned from plastic bags. National Guard troops, hastily called in to serve as poll workers, dashed around with plastic bottles of disinfectant spray, wiping things down between voters. Local firefighters passed out hand sanitizer to the thousands who waited for hours in lines that stretched for blocks, far past the trail of orange traffic cones that had been set up to keep folks six feet apart. Outside Washington High School, one waiting voter, Jennifer Taft, summed it all up perfectly, holding up a hand-lettered sign reading: “THIS IS RIDICULOUS.”
“I’m disgusted,” Taft told a local reporter. “I requested an absentee ballot almost three weeks ago and never got it. I have a father dying from lung disease, and I have to risk my life and his just to exercise my right to vote.”
Statewide, overall turnout was higher than expected. Even in that compressed time period, 1.1 million of Wisconsin’s 3.3 million voters had sent in absentee ballots—five times the number of voters who did so in the 2016 primary. And when the votes were all tallied six days later, the Democratic Supreme Court challenger had won easily, giving the lie to Trump’s theory that Evers wanted to delay the election to prevent a GOP victory.
But the Republicans’ efforts to sew confusion and long lines in the cities had worked in certain ways: In Milwaukee, which saw historically low Black turnout in 2016 after a strict new Voter ID law went into effect, the primary vote was half what it had been four years earlier. “It was voter suppression on steroids,” said Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez. “They tried to steal the election.”
[I have to risk my life just to exercise my right to vote.
JENNIFER TAFT, MILWAUKEE VOTER]
The mail balloting hadn’t gone smoothly, either: Nearly 12,000 voters who’d requested absentee ballots, like Jennifer Taft, never got them. Three tubs full of absentee ballots that never reached voters were found in a mail center outside Milwaukee. And 23,000 absentee ballots sent in by voters—more than Trump’s margin of victory in the state in 2016—had been disqualified for technical problems. Here as elsewhere, Republican lawmakers had made the process as complicated and time-consuming as possible to keep mail voting down, including a requirement that a witness sign every ballot. Voters’ signatures had to match the signatures on file with the state; as in other states, it’s left to election volunteers and staffers, not handwriting experts, to decide whether the signatures match. Thousands of votes were tossed on this subjective basis. (In June, after the delayed New York primary, 30,000 votes from Brooklyn, one-quarter of the total, would be tossed out for similar reasons.)
The threat of robust turnout figures posed by mail-in voting had fully stirred the right-wing propaganda machine by now—and it had given them a fresh new story to tell about what they claimed was the looming threat of mass left-wing “voter fraud.” The same day Wisconsin’s primary results were announced, an apparently new group called the Honest Elections Project aired an Orwellian TV and digital ad across the country—a six-figure buy—casting what happened in Wisconsin as Democrats’ “brazen attempt to manipulate the election system for partisan advantage by exploiting the coronavirus pandemic.” It was, the narrator intoned, a sign of election-rigging to come: “The facts about the Wisconsin election: Record absentee voting. Five times more than 2016. Democrats didn’t think they could win so they tried lawsuits, changing the rules, even canceling the election. They create chaos. It’s wrong.”
The Honest Elections Project turned out to be a legal alias for the Judicial Education Project, a powerful dark-money PAC funded by the Donors Trust, a nonprofit donor-advised fund often referred to as the “dark money ATM” of the right, with such heavy-hitting benefactors as billionaire Charles Koch and the (Betsy) DeVos family.It was the brainchild of Leonard Leo, a Trump confidant who was instrumental in the choice and confirmations of the president’s Supreme Court nominees, and it would soon begin filing lawsuits seeking to block the expansion of remote voting, and other pandemic-inspired election reforms—using the same lead attorney, longtime Washington litigator William Consovoy, as the Trump campaign.
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a litigious right-wing group that sues to effect voter-roll purges.]
At least three other lavishly funded far-right groups—Judicial Watch, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, and True the Vote—are also combining legal challenges with propaganda efforts designed to discredit, and disable, remote voting for November.The Republican National Committee issued a statement this spring promising to devote at least $20 million to such lawsuits as well. The messages they’re all promoting are identical to Trump’s rhetoric about the dangers of mail-in balloting and the Democrats’ purportedly cynical promotion of it to allegedly rig the election. Their combined resources and firepower adds up to the biggest coordinated effort to suppress votes in history. Until this year, battles over voting rules were mostly waged by Republican state lawmakers and right-wing legal firms not quite acceptable to the mainstream, cheered on by talk-radio shouters and extremist websites like The Gateway Pundit and Breitbart.
“You used to have these small-time, right-wing operations,” Mark Elias, a top Democratic litigator who’s working on several ongoing lawsuits, told The Washington Post in June. “Because Donald Trump has normalized all these crackpot theories about voter fraud, they’ve all now joined forces under the banner of the legitimate Republican establishment.”
All they want, they say, are the same old “fair” and “normal” elections that Trump keeps calling for. But the president, characteristically, had already given away the game before the Wisconsin primary lit the right wing on fire. On “Fox & Friends” during the week before that primary from hell, he’d warned the friendly hosts what would happen if voting by mail were allowed to metastasize: “You’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
[Gallows humor from artist Mike Licht regarding Wisconsin’s April 7, during-the-pandemic, in-person Spring election. via Flickr creative commons]
THE CRUSADE TO suppress votes in the 2020 election began long before COVID-19 existed, and long before the pandemic led to a popular clamor for more voting by mail. Three weeks after his razor-thin victory in the Electoral College, still irked at hearing about Hillary Clinton’s edge in the popular vote, President-elect Trump issued a tweetstorm citing right-wing conspiracy theories. His chief claim, often to be repeated: “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”
On stage at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Committee convention three months later, Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, backed up Trump’s claims. “The left would have you believe that we have about 43 million aliens in this country, both lawful and unlawfully present,” he said. “And none of them vote!” The activists in the audience cheered and chuckled. “You know, under the Obama administration, they opposed Voter ID; they opposed the idea of even asking someone whether they were a citizen before they register to vote,” Fitton went on to say. “Why would you be opposed to that, other than maybe wanting to steal elections when necessary?” Cue applause.
Fitton also seconded Trump’s call for a “federal investigation into voter fraud,” promising that it would be “the most significant civil rights investigation in a generation,” because, he said, “We’re on the side of civil rights. We’re on the side of the civil rights of Americans who potentially are having their votes stolen from them by the thousands, if not millions, by illegal votes.” Getting the findings to back up those assertions would be a breeze, he promised. “It’s easy to figure out where there’s voter fraud,” Fitton said, “and obviously that’s why the leftist voters are screaming, because they’re afraid their gig is up.”
Not quite, as it transpired. That “investigation” was launched in May 2017, when Trump made appointments to his newly concocted Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which included top vote-suppression specialists Kris Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state and anti-immigration zealot, and Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation. But it didn’t prove so easy to find hard proof of the massive fraud they’d long been claiming. After eight months of trying, the commissioners dug up only scattered cases drawn from media reports, and the president disbanded the effort.
[This is a pretext for blocking voices they do not want to hear.
STACEY ABRAMS, FAIR FIGHT FOUNDER]
But voter-suppression is now an industry unto itself, and Judicial Watch and its peers didn’t skip a beat.Ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, Judicial Watch and PILF sent 248 letters to state and local election officials across the country, threatening lawsuits if they didn’t undertake massive, aggressive “purges” of their voter rolls. “Your jurisdiction is in apparent violation of Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act,” the letters claimed. The NVRA, known as the “Motor Voter Act,” was passed in 1993 to “expand voting opportunities” in various ways, including offering registration at driver’s license offices. It also required local elections offices to undertake “uniform, non-discriminatory maintenance” of their registration rolls, striking those who’d become ineligible—by dying, going to prison, or moving out of state.
Under previous administrations, the Justice Department monitored these purges and sometimes stepped in when they became overzealous and were clearly targeting voters of color. “The rationale of removing voters from the rolls to protect against fraud is nonsensical,” Stacey Abrams, who founded the voting-rights group Fair Fight after narrowly losing the Georgia governor’s race in 2018, told Mother Jones earlier this year. “This is a pretext for blocking voices they do not want to hear.”
The letters contained legal threats, but their primary purpose was to stoke publicity about voter fraud—and to raise the profiles of Fitton andJ. Christian Adams, a former Department of Justice official who heads PILF and served on the ill-fated Election Integrity Commission. Adams is best known as the DOJ attorney who promoted a 2008 “voter intimidation” case against two members of a group that dubbed itself the New Black Panthers. On Election Day 2008, the two stationed themselves outside a predominantly white polling place in Philadelphia, one of them holding a nightstick. When Obama’s Justice Department declined to press charges, Adams loudly resigned and wrote a book called “Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department.” In lawsuits and legal threats targeting jurisdictions with large numbers of non-white voters, Adams first launched suits via the American Civil Rights Union (a right-wing group that fancies itself to be the analog to the American Civil Liberties Union), and then with PILF.
[“The rationale of removing voters from the rolls to protect against fraud is nonsensical,” says Stacey Abrams. “This is a pretext for blocking voices they do not want to hear.” (Photo of Abrams on election night 2018 from Abrams’ Facebook page.)]
Judicial Watch and PILF got a few big victories out of their threats and lawsuits, in 2018 and again last year. In 2018, the Supreme Court upheld a Judicial Watch settlement agreement with Ohio and allowed a massive voter purge—a decision that opened the floodgates for more of the same, permitting states to strike voters who haven’t voted in recent elections.
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As 2020 began, counties in California and Kentucky were busy removing close to 2 million voters; ditto, Allegheny County, one of the largest Pennsylvania counties carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016. In three other large Clinton-voting Pennsylvaniacounties Judicial Watch dragged into court this year, the group claimed an almost comically high number of “ineligible” voters—800,000 in all, which would amount to more than 65 percent of all registered voters in the counties. “We 100-percent dispute the claims,” Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar, who was also sued, told state senators.
Most of this year’s election lawsuits are related to COVID-19—or, more precisely, they target attempts by states and municipalities to make voting easier and safer during the pandemic. The number of these cases is staggering: More than 200were still percolating through the courts in mid-August. Many have been brought by the Trump campaign, theRepublican National Committee, Judicial Watch, PILF, and the Honest Elections Project, all of whom have the same agenda: Keep voting restrictions in place. Three more states have switched to all-mail elections this year: California, Nevada, and Vermont. When lawmakers in Nevada, where Trump lost by just 27,000 votes in 2016, approved all-mail voting in a special session on the first Sunday of August, Trump called it “an illegal late-night coup” on Twitter, with the promise, “See you in court!” Two days later, still fuming, he posted a tweet falsely stating that voting by mail would mean a “Rigged Election.” It became the first tweet flagged by Twitter as untrue. The same day, the Republican National Committee, the Trump campaign, and Nevada Republican Party all filed suit against Nevada.
In most states, election officials and lawmakers have simply tried to ease restrictions that can make absentee voting difficult or confusing: early deadlines for requesting ballots, Election Day deadlines for having them returned or postmarked, requirements that witnesses or notaries sign the ballots, strictly limited forms of acceptable ID. In some cases, the question is whether vulnerability to COVID-19 counts as an “excuse” for needing a mail ballot. (Most states already allow no-excuse absentee voting, but a few—like emerging battleground Texas—do not.)
Graphic from the National Conference of State Legislatures.]
Justin Levitt, a Loyola University law professor who tracks all these cases, has not detected a pattern in the decisions. But as he’s noted, it’s already a win for right-wing organizations and the Republicans to keep elections officials tied up in courts—and election rules in a state of suspended uncertainty as states try, with chronically inadequate funding, to manage an election during a pandemic. “My usual election-cycle comment is that we’re trying to find enough duct tape to cover the holes in the bucket,” Levitt said recently. “This time, we’re trying to make the bucket out of duct tape.”
The uncertainty created by the lawsuits, combined with the disinformation about voting that will be plastered all over social media this fall, creates an indirect but powerful form of voter suppression in itself.“Voter suppression is a combination of things,” says Georgia state Rep. and voting-rights advocate Renitta Shannon. “It’s a chipping away of people either not being able to vote, or thinking it will be a major hassle. When people have a question about whether their vote is going to be counted, that [becomes] a reason not to vote.”
ON JUNE 5, Tom Fitton and J. Christian Adams were both invited to testify at a U.S. House hearing on “Protecting the Right to Vote During the COVID-19 Crisis.” It was another sign of how formerly fringe right-wing conspiracies had become thoroughly mainstreamed in Trump’s GOP. And it provided another platform to spread the falsehood that Democrats were using the pandemic to make real their fraudulent dreams. “It is now about five months until Election Day,” Fitton testified, “and the pandemic’s infection curve has flattened. Insisting now on all-mail-ballot elections seems less like a response to a health crisis and more like a partisan application of the immortal words of Rahm Emanuel: ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste.’”
Fitton’s coronavirus predictions would soon be disproved, but the notion of Democrats using mail ballots to commit grand theft in 2020—“using COVID to defraud the American people,” as Trump expressed it on the first night of the Republican National Convention—remains the central deceit of the right’s propaganda campaign. “The Democrats have cooked this thing up,” Rush Limbaugh bellowed in August, “because they don’t feel confident that they can win in a traditionally fair and normal election.”
[J. Christian Adams, president and general counsel of the Public Interest Legal Foundation in 2019 screencap.]
In many places, the relative unfamiliarity of mail voting is a boon to the fear-mongering. And with folks on the right having been treated to years’ worth of “voter fraud” talk, they’d been conditioned to take it seriously. “When they talk about voter fraud,” says Tomas Lopez, executive director of the progressive group Democracy North Carolina, “they’re talking about race, of course. They’re lamenting the fact that those people get a vote.”
Across platforms—Fox News, talk radio, social media, presidential briefings—the narrative being served up about mail voting has been remarkably consistent in all its main plot points. It’s almost as if Judicial Watch teamed with the Trump campaign and sent out a bullet-point memo, which kicks off with “stealing and rigging” and proceeds, from there, to the following talking points:
Even more “illegals” get to vote.“Here’s a shocking things for your audience to consider,” senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller, architect of the immigration policy that caged children at the U.S.-Mexico border, said in August on “Fox & Friends.” “Nobody who mails in a ballot has their identity confirmed; nobody checks to see if they’re even a U.S. citizen. Think about that. Any foreign national—talk about foreign election interference—can mail in a ballot, and nobody even verifies if they’re a citizen of the United States of America.” (In reality, every state verifies the identity of the person requesting the mail-in ballot.)
This summer, Judicial Watch bought at least 263 ads on Facebook (cost: $210,000) to drive home the same spurious claim delivered by Miller on Fox News. According to a tally from Media Matters for America, 144 of the ads, which were full of disinformation about “voter fraud,” claimed that “illegal aliens are voting,” while 119 got more specific, claiming that “25% of noncitizens are registered to vote.”
Ballots Are On the Loose.
On May 1, Trump retweetedMollie Hemingway, a writer for The Federalist, a right-wing publication, who had some “news” that sounded startling: “Nearly one in five of all absentee and mail-in-ballots between 2012 and 2018 remain unaccounted for, according to data from the federal Election Assistance Commission,” she wrote. Hemingway drew her figures from a new and scholarly looking report by PILF—J. Christian Adams’ organization—which claimed that 28 million absentee ballots had “gone missing” in recent election cycles. Those ballots represent a golden opportunity for mass-scale fraud, Adams said in a statement accompanying the PILF report—“28 million opportunties for someone to cheat.”
The “missing ballots” meme spread like wildfire. But as voting-rights advocates (and logical thinkers) pointed out, the ballots aren’t just floating around, waiting for noncitizens and Democrats to scoop them up and send them in; they simply hadn’t been returned by the voters who got them. Twelve million of the “loose” ballots, as they’re also called, had been sent by election officials in Colorado, Oregon, and Washington state, where everyone who registers automatically receives one. About 30 percent of voters in those states typically don’t return their ballots in a given election. “Where are they now?” said Paul Gronke, a Reed College professor who runs the Early Voting Information Center, of the so-called “missing” ballots. “Most likely, in landfills.”
Democrats Are Harvesting Those Loose Ballots.
Expect to hear several earfuls about “ballot harvesting” between now and November. It’s the hip, scary-sounding new catchphrase for voter-fraudsters, though the practice it describes is a routine feature of absentee voting in more than half the states: Basically, it just means that a third party can collect someone’s vote in its sealed envelope and hand-deliver it to an election office. The laws are meant to help people who live at great distances from polling places without transportation, or who are sick or shut in, to cast a vote. In March, Trump’s own ballot in the Florida primary was “harvested”—he gave it to an (unknown) third party, who delivered it directly to an elections office in Palm Beach. Nonetheless, as he tweeted on April 14, we must “GET RID OF BALLOT HARVESTING, IT IS RAMPANT WITH FRAUD.”
Democratic workers sometimes organize “community collections,” leading right-wing pundits to peddle fantastical visions of thugs pounding on doors and demanding people’s blank ballots for harvesting. The proof? Well, in Paterson, N.J., this spring, a postal employee noticed something odd in a local post office five days before an all-mail primary: 347 completed ballots bundled together. They were part of a scheme for which four perpetrators, including one city council member, have all been charged with fraud. Amid the controversy, Paterson’s election board disqualified 19 percent of the ballots in the primary—which, trickling up from Gateway Pundit, a conspiracy theory website, to the West Wing, served as evidence of the fraudulent potential of “harvesting.” “Look at Patterson[sic], N.J.,” Trump tweeted. “20% of vote was corrupted!” In fact, election officials said that most of the uncounted ballots were tossed out for the usual technical reasons—mainly for signatures that didn’t appear to match those on file. The only example of large-scale ballot harvesting occurred in a North Carolina congressional race in the 2018 midterms. It was organized by a paid GOP operative who’s facing both state and federal charges.
“THIS IS GOING TO BE the greatest election disaster in history,” Trump promised reporters in the middle of yet another rant against vote-by-mail in August. He failed to mention how hard he and his right-wing allies were fighting to make his apocalyptic predictions about the election come true—or how much his prospects for victory may hinge on it.
The right’s doomsaying about chaos and fraud at the polls have definitely penetrated the national consciousness. In August, a Pew poll found that nearly half of registered U.S. voters expect to “have difficulties casting a ballot” this year. That might not sound surprising—but it’s a sea change from 2018, when 85 percent expected voting to be “easy.”
When it comes to mail voting in particular, however, it’s only Republicans who are moved by the propaganda. When Pew asked Trump supporters how they planned to vote, 80 percent said they’d do it in person, while just 17 percent would vote by mail. By contrast, most Biden supporters—58 percent—said they’d be voting remotely.
Given those results, it’s no surprise that, in the 2020 battleground states, Democrats are outpacing Republicans in absentee ballot requests. Far more, in fact. Four years ago in Florida, Democrats requested 6,000 more absentee ballots than Republicans; by the end of August this year, ballot requests by Democrats had surpassed those from Republicans by 600,000. In North Carolina, where absentee voting has always been sparse, 177,000 Democrats had asked for ballots compared to 50,000 Republicans. “Everybody’s up,” said Michael Bitzer, a politics professor at Catawba College. “It’s just that Democrats and unaffiliated are through the roof, and Republicans are not even on the second floor.”
This disparity, which is consistent in other battleground states, has saner Republican officials and activists deeply worried. What if the anti-mail campaign ends up backfiring, and suppressing their votes? And with the virus likely to still be raging come November, will GOP voters—seniors, in particular—actually take the risk to show up in person to vote? “What the president is doing when he keeps saying that this mail-in balloting thing is fraudulent, he’s scaring our own voters from using a legit way to cast your ballot,” Rohn Bishop, chair of the Fond du Lac County GOP in Wisconsin, told USA Today. “We’re kind of hurting ourselves.” When he tries to talk up absentee voting to fellow Republicans, Bishop said, he gets a lot of flak that he’s “ignoring voter fraud.” It’s not easy to argue when the Republican president keeps calling vote-by-mail “the greatest scam in history.”
The weird thing, said Bishop and other Republican state leaders, is that while the president continues to slam mail voting on a daily basis, the Trump campaign and RNC have told them to promote it. “I’m out there pushing it at the request of the campaign, because they asked me [to] do that,” said Lawrence Tabas, chair of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, which Trump carried by less than 1 percent in 2016—and where Democrats have made 68 percent of all mail-ballot requests, while Republicans requested just 24 percent. “And then the president is publicly opposed to it,” Tabas added. “Let’s put it this way; it’s made my job more challenging.” The Pennsylvania GOP website urges Republicans to “Vote Safe: By mail. From home.”
GOP voters in California also heard that “safe, from home” message before they voted in this spring’s primary—from two of Trump’s family members, no less. Both daughter-in-law Lara Trump and Donald Jr. recorded robocalls in April urging mail votes for a Republican congressional candidate in a special election. “Nancy Pelosi and liberal Democrats are counting on you to sit on the sidelines this election, but you can prove them wrong,” Lara Trump said in one call. “You can safely and securely vote for Mike Garcia by returning your mail-in ballot by May 12.”
Both Lara Trump and Donald Jr. recorded robocalls in April urging mail votes for a Republican congressional candidate in a special election.
One major group on the right, Americans for Prosperity, is flexing its considerable muscle to counter the president’s message and urge right-wing voters to take advantage of either early or absentee voting this fall. Tim Phillips, president of the “grasstops” group, which underwrote the Tea Party movement, told Politico this spring that AFP “is absolutely going to up the percentage of dollars that go into absentee and early voting.” The group, which raked in $83 million in donations in 2018, has plenty to spend. It plans to target conservative voters in dozens of competitive congressional districts.
But Judicial Watch, PILF, the Honest Elections Project, and allied groups like True the Vote—which is recruiting ex-Navy SEALs to serve as GOP poll-watchers on Nov. 3—are delivering a contrary message: It’s perfectly safe to vote in person. “Don’t let the left scare you from voting on Election Day,” Tom Fitton said on a Judicial Watch podcast on July 31. The same message continues to blast out on conservative media. “If people can go to Home Depot and distance six feet,” Fox host Jeanine Pirro said this summer, “why can’t they go to the voting booth and distance six feet?”
Is there a coherent strategy here, somehow? Do the clashing messages make any strategic sense? Perhaps not. But some political observers suspect that Trump is setting up a way to delegitimize the results in November. If more Republicans do turn out in person, their votes will be among those tallied first—creating a chance that Trump may lead on election night, even if only half of the total vote, or less, is counted by then. In that event, Jamelle Bouie wrote this summer in his New York Times column, “There’s no mystery about what Donald Trump intends to do… . First, he’ll claim victory. Then, having spent most of the year denouncing vote-by-mail as corrupt, he’ll demand that authorities stop counting mail-in and absentee ballots. He’ll have a team of lawyers challenging courts and ballots across the country.”
It’s certainly plausible. Just as in 2016, Trump has refused to say he’ll accept the results—unless, that is, they show him winning. “You don’t know until you see,” he said this summer on Fox News. “It depends. I think mail-in voting is going to rig the election, I really do.”
In November 2018, when the Republican candidates for governor and senator in Florida held leads on election night that began to dissipate as the vote-counting continued, Trump telegraphed what he might say this November: “The Florida election should be called in favor of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis in that large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged,” he tweeted. “An honest vote count is no longer possible—ballots massively infected. Must go with Election Night!”
Attorney General William Barr has indicated that the Department of Justice would have Trump’s back if he tries to shut down the count. “I think the people who want to experiment with different ways of voting right now … are playing with fire and are grossly irresponsible,” Barr told Fox News’ Mark Levin in August. Sounding more like a Judicial Watch attorney than the attorney general of the United States, Barr called it “scary” that “most of those mailings go to a lot of addresses where the people no longer live. They’re misdirected. And I think they will create a situation—they could easily create a situation where there’s going to be a contested election.”
That is chilling to hear. It stirs up nightmare visions of Florida 2000 but on a national scale—and in a year that’s already been full of unrest. Realistically, though, it’s also a far-fetched strategy born of desperation. And there’s a much rosier scenario that is just as plausible as Bouie’s, if not more so.
Say this election proves to be less apocalyptic than Trump and the right are hoping—and say Trump is clearly a loser on election night. The president’s defeat, and the pandemic-inspired rise of mail voting, could begin to unravel the elaborate system of barriers to voting that Republicans have been erecting over the past decade. If Democrats retake a majority in the U.S. Senate, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act will surely be one of the first measures to pass, restoring protections and federal oversight to elections. And if Republicans lose control of state houses they captured (which they are poised to do in several battleground states), Democratic majorities can begin to reverse the race-based voting restrictions that the GOP has been cooking up with relentless creativity since the Tea Party insurrection lifted them to unprecedented power in Congress and the states.
“What we’ve had is the 21st century equivalent of the Mississippi Plan of 1890,” says Carol Anderson, the Emory University historian and best-selling author of One Person, One Vote. That “plan” was the template for other states to “redeem” white supremacy after Reconstruction by disenfranchising Black men all over again, through tactics like poll taxes, literacy tests, and violent intimidation. The 2010s were eerily similar. “It’s been legislative evil genius,” Anderson says. “And so Jim Crow.”
Anderson is a serious historian, so she’ll make no predictions. But there is at least a fair chance that the latest manifestation of the Republicans’ long and fraudulent voter-fraud campaign—the demonizing of remote-voting during a pandemic—will backfire on them in a lasting way. The hollering won’t die down, of course; Trump himself will make sure of that. The voter-suppression industry—the Judicial Watches, the PILFs, the Honest Elections Projects—won’t disappear. Chief Justice John Roberts won’t suddenly start deciding in favor of voting rights. But the more Americans grow accustomed to voting by mail, and the more they keep demanding that it be made easier and more reliable, the harder their votes will be to suppress or toss out. Trump is right, after all, about one thing: Wherever remote voting becomes routine, turnout soars. And we all know who loses then.
Tags: Carol AndersonDonald J. TrumpJ Christian AdamsJamelle BouieJennifer TaftJustice John RobertsJustin LevittLaura IngrahamLawrence TabasLeonard LeoMark EliasMichael BitzerRohn BishopRon DeSantisStacey AbramsTim PhillipsTom FittonTony EversWilliam BarrWilliam Consovoy
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https://theintercept.com/2020/09/30/philadelphia-early-voting-trump-poll-watchers
1020 intercept
panic Over Mail-in Voting Only Feeds Trump’s Chaos, Says Top Pennsylvania Democrat
Ryan Grim
Voters in the Keystone State who request an absentee ballot but decide to vote in person are playing into Trump’s hands, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman warns.
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/bill-barrs-tip-off-revealed-trumps-desperation-and-his-own-pitiful-effort-to-boost-the-president
steve salon
on Thursday, President Trump, White House staff, federal prosecutors and Trump campaign spokespeople issued dire warnings about voting this fall with mailed-out ballots after a temporary election worker in a Pennsylvania County apparently mishandled nine ballots cast by military service members.
The incident occurred in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, a swing county in a swing state, where nearly 6 million votes for president were cast in 2016's fall election. (Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 44,292 votes.)
The White House and Trump campaign statements raced to the top of national news and social media. They also drew intelligent rejoinders from experts who know how elections are run, from warnings not to fall for claims of massive malfeasance when poll workers routinely make small scale errors, to tweets that the mistake involving discarded ballots should have been easily fixed by routine procedures.
"Luzerne County has the ability to contact these military voters and enfranchise them, despite the mistake, but now, the DOJ [Department of Justice] has already pierced the secrecy of their ballots, before the county could act to help these voters, with no legitimate law enforcement reason," tweeted David Becker, a former Justice Department Voting Section attorney who is now executive director of the non-profit, non-partisan Center for Election Innovation and Research.
"After investigating for only 3 days, apparently finding no crime, and before the military voters were notified, the DOJ violates ballot secrecy, and the AG [Attorney General William Barr] personally briefs the president on this fixable mistake, and shortly after, the president uses it in his campaign," Becker said in an earlier tweet recounting the events.
Becker's comments raise disturbing questions. How far will the Justice Department go to smear routine election administration on behalf of the president's re-election? The mistakes made in Luzerne County, which twice voted for Barrack Obama but backed Trump in 2016, were noted by local election officials. A temporary poll worker was fired, but the incident was quickly seized by the Justice Department, White House and Trump campaign which announced investigations and issued statements.
The U.S. attorney general's fealty to Trump above protecting the Justice Department's reputation as being above politics, as many scholars have noted, is unlike anything seen in decades and extends beyond voting. Barr has assailed federal prosecutors for not arresting protesters in racial justice protests. Even the nation's military chiefs have worried that Trump will order them to intervene if there's election unrest.
It may be hard not to react viscerally as Trump continues to lie about purported fraud involving mailed-out ballots and keeps escalating his attacks on election officials—who largely have let those inaccurate smears go unanswered because they are civil servants who do not speak about elected officials due to their professional ethics.
But there may be a counterpoint worth keeping in mind. While the Justice Department is abusing its immense power by issuing statements about investigations before any evidence has been presented in court, there is something pitiful about the FBI, state and local police resorting to dumpster diving in rural Pennsylvania to boost Trump.
The Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, episode underscores that small-scale errors are a fact of life in managing elections, but they are not indices of a flawed overall system.
"There will be reports of ballots sent to voters that end up in the trash or in a ditch. We may hear about a box of ballots never delivered to voters or election officials by the post office. There may be isolated instances of fraud, or of things that initially look like fraud but turn out to be election administrator error," Rick Hasen, a University of California Irvine law professor and nationally known expert on elections, wrote in the Los Angeles Times. "This doesn't mean we won't have a fair election overall, and we should not allow cynical political operatives to parlay small-bore errors into a full-scale attack on the integrity of the November vote."
As other analyses have noted, it is Barr and DOJ officials following his orders (and not all are) that have broken with institutional protocols to insulate the Department from political tides. Beyond the abuses of power, abandonment of professional ethics and politicizing the agency that is supposed to defend voting rights, not subvert them, is a measure of desperation by a president whose rhetoric suggests that he would not be re-elected in a normal election.
As the New York Times noted on September 26, Barr's briefing Trump on finding nine mishandled mail-in ballots in a state "was akin to telling him about the most mundane law enforcement developments across the country," which was anything but briefing a president "on a criminal D.O.J. investigation only if it was of some major importance to national security."
It remains to be seen how far the DOJ can go to interfere in America's locally run elections.Last Thursday's statement by David Freed, the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, in a letter to Luzerne officials, was a slap on the wrist filled with more innuendo than facts.
"The preliminary findings of this inquiry are troubling and the Luzerne County Bureau of Elections must comply with all applicable state and federal election laws and guidance to ensure that all votes—regardless of party—are counted to ensure an accurate election count," Freed said. "Even though your staff has made some attempts to reconstitute certain of the improperly opened ballots, there is no guarantee that any of these votes will be counted in the general election."
As Becker's tweet noted, it was the DOJ that breached the secret ballots—by revealing their presidential votes—and blocked officials from resolving an easily fixed problem.
Election officials in swing counties know the stakes in 2020's election. They do not need reminders from the Justice Department about doing their job. While the prospect of the DOJ looking over their shoulder is unnerving, the Luzerne County incident also reveals how worried Trump is about losing. And it is a nationwide tipoff of how far the attorney general and president will go to create mirages that undermine public confidence in the voting process and results.
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mma 920
we've already documented the right-wing lies about absentee and mail-in voting at length, and how those lies have permeated Facebook.
A new Media Matters study shows that such lies are also all over YouTube. We assessed the top 100 YouTube videos about mail-in voting (as identified through a search on the tool BuzzSumo) with at least 10,000 views from right-leaning, left-leaning, and nonaligned YouTube channels over a six-month period between March 1 and August 31:
- Right-leaning channels posted 39 of the top 100 videos during the six-month period, and these videos accumulated over 8.6 million views -- nearly half of the total views (47%).
- Left-leaning channels posted 22 of the top 100 videos during the six-month period, and these videos accumulated over 4.2 million views (23% of the total) -- less than half as many views as right-leaning channels.
- Nonaligned channels posted 33 of the top 100 videos during the six-month period, and these videos accumulated over 5.6 million views (30% of total views).
- The top 100 videos about voting by mail that accumulated at least 10,000 views came from 52 different channels.
Watch: The rank hypocrisy of the Judicial Crisis Network
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/heres-the-truth-about-the-white-house-and-dojs-9-discarded-ballots-in-pennsylvania/
no lnx twt
here's the truth about the White House and DOJ's 9 discarded ballots in Pennsylvania
David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement September 27, 2020
Major news is coming in over the "case" of the nine "discarded" ballots from Luzerne County, Pennsylvania that President Donald Trump revealed to Fox News Radio on Thursday.
Here's what appears to have happened, and we're going to bullet point this so it's easy to follow.
The ballots were discarded by a temporary, or "contract" worker assigned to sort the mail who appears to have been following direction.
The ballots were military ballots, not absentee or other by-mail ballots.
The county immediately reported what happened to federal officials, who appear to have immediately politicized the issue.
"Because these ballots were returned in envelopes similar to absentee ballot requests, elections officials opened them," The Washington Post reports. "If the ballots weren't then enclosed in another envelope which shielded the actual vote being cast, they may have been considered 'naked ballots,' a term used to describe mail ballots returned without the voter's intent being protected.
The Trump campaign and the Pennsylvania GOP in a lawsuit argued that "naked ballots" should not be counted. They won that lawsuit. These nine ballots appear to be "naked ballots," and that appears to be the reason they were thrown out.
Here's how MSNBC's Chris Hayes sums it up: It's the GOP's fault.
The contract worker has been told to not return.
Buzzfeed adds it appears the DOJ violated its own policy by issuing a press release about the "discarded" ballots, and even worse, suggesting this is a case of election fraud, and even worse than that, suggesting one candidate over another was favored.
MSNBC adds that county officials were not aware of who the ballots were for until the DOJ's press release was issued.
Attorney General Bill Barr personally briefed President Trump about the discarded ballots. Trump and his White House press secretary then politicized the event.
The county elections supervisor was exceedingly thorough. "Garbage from the Elections Bureau from September 14 through September 16, the time the independent contractor was on County property, was put in a dumpster and secured by County staff," a local Pennsylvania news report states. "The trash was then searched by the FBI, the Luzerne County District Attorney's Office, the Pennsylvania State Police and county staff. All contents relating to the matter were taken by the FBI."
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state scotus esp swing? WI?
an 920
'naked ballots' crisis triggered by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court just put 100,000 votes on the line in the key state
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an 920
new documents show Postal Service leadership forced changes that upended serviceJoan McCarter / Daily
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920 salon
republicans to ask Supreme Court to restrict voting by mail in Pennsylvania in post-Ginsburg appeal
IGOR DERYSH
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/usps-had-plan-to-send-5-face-masks-to-every-home-as-exploded-the-white-house-ed-it/
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/cover-up-house-democrats-subpoena-documents-nlrb-refused-to-share-in-ethics-investigation-propublica/
Starting in early spring, as the coronavirus took hold, a conservative lawyer at the forefront of raising alarms about voting by mail held multiple private briefings exclusively for Republican state election officials, according to previously unreported public records.
The lawyer, the Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky, is a leading purveyor of the notion that voter fraud is rampant, claims that have been largely discredited.
Among the participants in these meetings has been an official from the office of Georgia’s secretary of state; the secretary, Brad Raffensperger, recently elevated concerns about voter fraud by contending that 1,000 Georgians had voted twice in elections this year.
gOP congressional staffers and a Trump administration appointee have also joined in these meetings, which were open to officials from states across the country, including Missouri and Nevada, the records show. No Democratic state election officials appear to have been invited.
The “goal” of the meetings, held remotely, is to “gather the chief state election officials together to strategize on advancing their shared goal of ensuring the integrity of the elections they administer in their home states,” an invitation to an early August event reads.
Most of the states declined to comment on the meetings, and it’s not clear what specifically was discussed. Von Spakovsky is highly influential in conservative circles. He has sent invitees copies of his published essays pushing for in-person voting and culling voter rolls as absentee balloting expands amid the pandemic, a situation that von Spakovsky argued will “make fraud far easier.”
The meetings come as voting access has become one of the central flashpoints of the upcoming presidential election. More Americans are expected to vote by mail this year than ever before because of the health risks posed by COVID-19. President Donald Trump has repeatedly and baselessly asserted that mail-in voting is rife with problems.Echoing von Spakovsky, he asserted on Twitter in July that the upcoming presidential vote will be the “most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history.”
Experts have said voting by mail carries little risk of fraud. Since it is widely believed that more Democractic voters will vote by mail than Republicans, von Spakovsky’s proposals, if adopted, could suppress Democratic turnout in one of the most consequential presidential elections in a generation.
Secretaries of state, who oversee statewide voting and work with county election officials, have broad leeway to act in ways that can limit or expand the franchise. While most are partisan elected officials, they are expected to carry out policies that benefit everyone.
The Heritage Foundation did not make von Spakovsky available for an interviewand didn’t address detailed questions about the meetings. In a statement, the nonprofit’s media director, Greg Scott, said election security was “crucial to our country’s future.”
“The Heritage Foundation is committed to making sure elections are free and fair,” he said. “Every eligible voter’s vote should be counted and not canceled out by fraudulent acts.”
The remote gatherings are an outgrowth of private, in-person meetings von Spakovsky has held with Republican election authorities each year since Trump took office, the records show. Participants have hailed from at least a dozen states, including battlegrounds like Ohio and Georgia. They typically dovetail with the national conference of secretaries of state in Washington, D.C., and take place at Heritage’s headquarters. Those pre-pandemic meetings did not primarily address voting by mail.
Jonathan Diaz, a lawyer for the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan voting rights group, said it’s one thing for von Spakovsky to make dubious claims of voter fraud in public but “another thing entirely for him to be circumventing official channels and making these presentations in private, where they’re not subject to public scrutiny.”
Diaz added that election authorities need to be “transparent about the information they’re relying on to make decisions about the ballot.”
Von Spakovsky has hosted at least two of these remote meetings in recent months. In April, there was an hourlong “Election Administration Forum Conference Call” that covered, in part, the expansion of mail-in voting and “ways to message these concerns to your constituents,” according to the invitation. The event included the ranking member of the U.S. House of Representatives committee that oversees elections and five staffers, one of whom went on to work for the Trump campaign two months later. An August meeting, conducted through a secure, virtual video conferencing platform, was scheduled to last for two hours, according to an invitation.
A staffer from the Georgia secretary of state’s office participated in the April call. Before that, the secretary himself, Raffensperger, met with von Spakovsky in the summer of 2019 at Raffensperger’s request. At the Georgian Club in Atlanta, the two discussed a new law that involved replacing the state’s voting machines, according to Raffensperger’s deputy, Jordan Fuchs. That statute contributed to problems during what was widely viewed as a troubled June primary.
This month, around the time Raffensperger went public about double voting concerns in his state, he also appealed a federal judge’s ruling that the state must count absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day, the kind of policy change von Spakovsky has argued Democrats are using to “game the system” ahead of November.
“Hans, to our office, is the ultimate voter integrity activist,” Fuchs told ProPublica. While von Spakovsky “hasn’t driven any policy decisions” that have taken place under the secretary, Fuchs said that she briefed von Spakovsky on her office’s actions regarding double voting and absentee ballots.
There are indications that von Spakovsky has been influential within the Trump administration as well. During the August virtual briefing, state election administrators were told that Cameron Quinn, a Department of Homeland Security official, would now be their “liaison to the election community,” according to emails that a participant from Washington state sent to his colleagues.
Quinn has worked as an elections official in Virginia with von Spakovsky and has co-taught a law school course with him. During the meeting, she provided her cellphone number to the attendees.
The announcement of her role apparently came as a surprise to Washington officials, including the state’s director of elections, the emails show. The director, a member of a five-person committee that regularly interacts with DHS over election security matters, told her colleagues that there is a point of contact within the agency — and it’s not Quinn.
It turned out Quinn participated in the meeting without notifying her new boss beforehand, according to people familiar with the matter. Her appointment to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a division within DHS that monitors election systems for foreign hacking attempts and communicates with state officials about them, had only been announced within the agency a day earlier, they said.
It’s not clear whether Quinn is still in contact with state elections officials. A division spokeswoman confirmed Quinn was not yet an employee in the division at the time she participated in the meeting but declined to answer additional questions.
Beyond Quinn, it’s not clear whether any executive branch officials have participated in von Spakovsky’s remote briefings. But in 2019, during his annual in-person gathering, the then-head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, John Gore, and its chief of staff and counsel, Omeed Assefi, attended in their official capacities, according to an attendee list.
The division is responsible for protecting the rights of voters. An agenda from the event shows that Gore and von Spakovsky led an hourlong discussion on “election reforms in the states and messaging and update on civil rights division, U.S. Department of Justice.”
“This is highly inappropriate,” Vanita Gupta, who ran the division under President Barack Obama, told ProPublica. “That kind of closed-door session, where a head of the Civil Rights Division is secretly speaking about enforcement with partisan state officials, is unprecedented. The DOJ isn’t accountable to just one party.”
Gore declined to commenton what took place at the event or if he’d attended other von Spakovsky meetings in the past as head of the Civil Rights Division. The Justice Department didn’t respond to questions about the Civil Rights Division’s involvement in the meeting or Gore’s presentation at the 2019 event.
At the Heritage Foundation, von Spakovsky maintains a database of voter fraud cases and, emails show, regularly urges secretaries of state to contribute to it. At the moment, the database encompasses some 1,300 cases, stretching over a period that begins in 1982. As Reuters recently noted, billions of ballots were cast during that time.
Von Spakovksy’s writings on voter fraud carry the veneer of academic research. But when he was questioned about his work in a trial two years ago, he testified that none of it has undergone the stringent vetting process of peer review. The judge in that case dismissed his testimony, saying it was “premised on several misleading and unsupported examples” and included “false assertions.”
Before coming to the Heritage Foundation, von Spakovsky served on both the Federal Election Commission and in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, where he drew scrutiny after approving a voter ID law in Georgia that a federal judge likened to a Jim Crow-style poll tax. In May 2017, Trump appointed von Spakovsky to a voter fraud commission that disbanded less than a year later without producing any evidence of voter fraud.
Do you have access to information about efforts by outside groups seeking to influence how election officials will administer the vote on Nov. 3 that should be public? Email Mike Spies at mike.spies@propublica.org, Jake Pearson at jake.pearson@propublica.org or Jessica Huseman at jessica.huseman@propublica.org. Here’s how to send tips and documents to ProPublica securely.
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/federal-judge-orders-usps-to-stop-sending-patently-false-mailers-to-voters-that-will-sow-confusion/
no lnx twt pix
Jake Johnson / Common Dreams September 13, 2020
A federal judge late Saturday ordered the U.S. Postal Service to immediately stop sending mailers containing false voting information to Colorado residents, saying he is “deeply troubled” by the decision to distribute the misleading postcards to households across the nation.
“As a result of false information contained in the notice, some Colorado voters may not vote because they erroneously believe that: (1) they must request a ballot at least 15 days before the election; (2) they must mail their ballot at least seven days prior to the election; or (3) they may not vote if they lose their ballot,” wrote U.S. District Court Judge William Martínez in a 10-page ruling (pdf) granting Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s request for a temporary restraining order.
“In reality, Colorado voters do not need to request a ballot at any time. Voters who receive a ballot do not need to mail the ballot back at least seven days before the election; they may alternatively deposit that ballot at a drop-box or may choose to vote in person up to and including on Election Day,” Martínez continued, describing some of the information on the mailer “patently false.”
“The notice, if distributed, will sow confusion amongst voters by delivering a contradictory message,” the judge said.
The ruling came hours after Griswold sued Postmaster General Louis DeJoy—a Republican megadonor to President Donald Trump—and other top USPS officials over the mailers, which have already arrived at households in Colorado and other states just weeks ahead of the November election.
While acknowledging the postcards “may have started off as a well-intentioned effort” to inform voters ahead of the election, Griswold tweeted late Friday that “confusing voters about mail ballots in the middle of a pandemic is unacceptable.”
As Common Dreams reported Saturday, election officials in California, Washington state, and Maryland have also publicly raised alarm about the postcards, which contain both broad advice on how to vote by mail as well as specific timelines that could mislead residents of states with different rules.
In an emailed statement Saturday as at least five additional states considered suing over the postcards, the USPS said the mailers are intended to provide “general, all-purpose guidance on the use of the mail, and not guidance on state election rules.”
“The mail-piece—which has already been delivered to most households and will reach every American residential mailing and P.O. Box address in the coming week—contains a single set of simple recommendations for voters throughout the nation, regardless of where they live and where they vote,” the Postal Service said. “At the same time, we are aware that each state has its own specific rules, deadlines and requirements, and the mail-piece acknowledges that fact.”
Griswold said Saturday that she urged the Postal Service not to send out the mailers in Colorado due to the misleading information, but her request was denied.
“As the chief election official of the state of Colorado, it’s my job to try to stop misinformation and any unnecessary election confusion,” said Griswold. “The importance of this election, combined with the fact it is being held amidst a national pandemic, further heightens the need to provide correct voting information to Coloradans.”
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sow chaos? de-legit vote ~ mail in
https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/ag-barr-repeatedly-claims-he-doesnt-know-if-its-illegal-to-vote-twice-when-confronted-with-trump-comments/
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/usps-has-paid-trumps-postmaster-general-286-million-since-2013-report/
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https://theconversation.com/amid-partisan-fight-over-postal-services-future-its-past-reveals-a-common-bond-that-helped-stamp-an-identity-on-america-144644
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https://theconversation.com/a-dismantled-post-office-destroys-more-than-mail-service-144330
The U.S. Postal Service is under threat of collapse and privatization. This comes after years of federal political maneuvering that has effectively depleted revenues and staffing – issues now amplified by new cuts to overtime worker pay and slowed delivery.
This matters now more than ever as the COVID-19 pandemic rages, and ahead of November elections when many Americans anticipate voting by mail in order to stay safe.
But the impacts of degrading the USPS go beyond simply making mail service less reliable and hindering the ability of Americans to fairly exercise their right to vote.
As an urban designer and scholar of American cities, I have long witnessed the effects that these kinds of intentional public sector degradations have on the social and physical fabric of American cities.
The post office shapes American public and private life in cities and towns, large and small. A dismantled USPS erodes American social ties, neighborhoods and even families.
A democratizing institution
The post office is what urban designers call a “local public anchor institution.” These are the shared civic buildings, services and spaces accessible by all and benefiting all, and they also include public schools, libraries and parks. They support the population without discrimination, through economic downturns and even during pandemics.
There was a time when institutions like the post office served as the civic and economic backbone of the country. After the Great Depression, investing in the USPS was a key element of the New Deal’s massive employment policy agenda and national civic building and arts programs. Those investments built avenues to middle-class jobs for minorities and veterans – opportunities that the USPS still provides today.
There’s a democratizing quality to the service. No matter what city or suburb you live in, everyone can recognize the ubiquitous blue mailboxes, which enable all citizens to send mail to any location on Earth.
While the mailboxes unite the country under one aesthetic, individual post offices highlight the rich diversity of American regionalism.
On Nantucket, the post office is a grey, weathered, cedar-shingled bungalow. Along the Detroit River, it’s a boat – with its own floating ZIP code and “mail-in-the-pail” system that delivers mail to and from ships.
In Chicken, Alaska, the post office is a log cabin, and La Jolla, California, residents recently fought to save their tile-roofed southern California Mission-style branch.
These quirky local anchors connect people to particularities of time and place. Significantly, in 2012 the National Trust for Historic Preservation added historic post offices to their list of endangered buildings.
Meanwhile the bigger, main post offices like those in St. Louis, Washington, D.C. and New Orleans are treasured architectural marvels that span entire city blocks. Built at the turn of the 20th century and now on the National Register of Historic Places, their grand designs represent ambitious public investment and confidence in the government’s role to foster trade, commerce and communication....
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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/sean-hannity-says-postal-workers-cant-be-trusted-deliver-ballots
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/tucker-carlson-claims-concern-over-us-postal-service-part-preparations-military-overthrow
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/complete-bombshell-former-top-usps-official-reveals-disturbing-new-details-of-dejoy-selection-and-mnuchin-sabotage-of-mail-service
no lnx vid twt
"Complete bombshell’: Former top USPS official reveals ‘disturbing’ new details of DeJoy selection and Mnuchin sabotage of mail service
Written by Common Dreams August 21, 2020
In his first public remarks since resigning from the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors in protest at the end of April, David Williams on Thursday offered a number of alarming new details surrounding the selection of Trump megadonor Louis DeJoy as postmaster general and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s efforts to exert influence over mail operations and finances.
Williams, the former vice chairman of the USPS Board of Governors with decades of federal government experience, testified to the Congressional Progressive Caucus that what he witnessed in his final months at the Postal Service was unprecedented, detailing how Mnuchin required members of the supposedly independent board to “come to his office to kiss the ring and receive his blessing before confirmation” and made “illegal” demands of officials.
“Corruption, plain and simple. Not only is Louis DeJoy a Trump crony and clearly unqualified to be Postmaster General but he also has significant financial conflicts of interest that make him eager to destroy the USPS altogether. We won’t let him.”
—Rep. Pramila Jayapal
“The Secretary has called over board members to provide instructions and requests and express his displeasure, which is really striking. I’m not sure I’ve run into that before, where one department is trying to run another department,” said Williams, who previously served as USPS inspector general. “Normally you would simply reject the effort and report it to Congress.”
Williams told lawmakers that the removal of USPS mailboxes in several states was specifically advocated by Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs executive who was reportedly involved in the recruitment of DeJoy for the postmaster general position.
“The blue boxes were maybe the most interesting of all,” said Williams, a Democrat who was appointed to the Board of Governors by President Donald Trump. “Those were not part of ongoing plans. To my knowledge, as a matter of fact… Secretary Mnuchin wanted that done. His study of the Postal Service asked that it be done.”
In response to Williams’ account of Mnuchin’s interference at the independent agency, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) said the treasury secretary should be called—and, if necessary, subpoenaed—to testify before Congress.
“This hearing is a complete bombshell,” tweeted David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, which first reported that Williams resigned from the Board of Governors in protest.
Williams also offered an inside look at the process that led to the Board of Governors’ selection and May appointment of DeJoy, a former logistics executive with zero experience working for the Postal Service.
Asked whether the board interviewed other qualified candidates for the postmaster general role, Williams answered in the affirmative and characterized DeJoy as uniquely unfit for the job, recounting that he had to be coached through his interviews. Williams said DeJoy’s appointment was pushed by John Barger, a board member and Republican donor who—according to Williams—helped DeJoy “finish a number of sentences where he got stuck” and “explained to the board what Mr. DeJoy meant during the presentation.”
Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.) called Williams’ description of the selection process “very, very disturbing.” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Williams’ testimony was “stunning.”
Williams’ revelations came just hours before DeJoy is set to appear before the Republican-controlled Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, where he is expected to face questions about his sweeping policy changes that caused massive mail backlogs across the nation.
A day after DeJoy vowed to suspend the operational changes until after the November election, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement that the postmaster general “frankly admitted” to her that he has “no intention of replacing the sorting machines, blue mailboxes, and other key mail infrastructure that have been removed and that plans for adequate overtime, which is critical for the timely delivery of mail, are not in the works.”
In a letter to the USPS Board of Governors on Wednesday, 90 House Democrats demanded the immediate removal of DeJoy for using his brief tenure as postmaster general “to sabotage the United States Postal Service.”
“Despite recent claims by Mr. DeJoy that implementation of certain changes may be delayed,” the lawmakers wrote, “he has already done considerable damage to the institution and we believe his conflicts of interest are insurmountable.”
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Schumer demands Postal Board disclose how Trump, Mnuchin intervened in DeJoy’s appointment
Joan McCarter / Daily KosAugust 20, 2020
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer wants some answers to questions he’s been asking since June about the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors’ selection of Louis DeJoy to be postmaster general. Schumer…
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https://www.inthepublicinterest.org/the-billionaire-behind-efforts-to-kill-the-usps/
https://www.inthepublicinterest.org/wp-content/uploads/ITPI_USPSPrivatization_July2020.pdf
COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the already-struggling U.S. Postal Service to the brink of financial collapse. But the most trusted and popular institution in America hasn’t been struggling by accident. Since the 1970s, a concerted effort to popularize the fringe idea of privatizing the Postal Service has been advanced for nearly five decades with the support of one man: the billionaire and libertarian ideologue, Charles Koch, chairman and chief executive officer of Koch Industries. This brief traces Koch’s connections, influence, and ideological push to weaken and ultimately privatize one of America’s most essential public services—and, along with it, the jobs of hundreds of thousands of public servants. [Timeline]...
[bkgd]
...These are just a few components of Koch’s political empire, which also deploys front groups. Although Koch has used his PR team to try to distance himself from Trump, the reality is that the Koch network’s 2016 spending in swing states and Senate races helped buoy Trump in his bid for the White House. Koch’s efforts also helped ensure that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), a key Koch ally, remained the Republican leader of the Senate. From this position, he’s helped Koch reshape the U.S. Supreme Court and the federal judiciary, stop a carbon tax, and thwart efforts to mitigate climate change and regulate industry in myriad ways. AFP’s latest attack on the Postal Service is part of Koch’s ongoing efforts to weaken the funding and capacity of our government. Koch’s network spent millions to win what Koch himself touted as a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to cut taxes, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which AFP helped push through and which further enriched Koch and his friends. Koch has also given millions to political campaigns, PACs, and other groups. For those who’ve been keeping score at home: To Koch, even though the Postal Service is vital to more than 300 million of his fellow Americans, helping the agency survive with $25 billion in aid should not be allowed.
But tax cuts to benefit himself and his billionaire friends—which cost America more than $2.3 trillion—was a top priority for his political machine. AFP is not alone among Koch groups in trying to destroy the Postal Service. Other major Koch-funded groups, such as the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University have also supported privatization. Even the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which focuses on state legislation, has tried to weaken the Postal Service. For years it has pushed a bill to require that ballots from military service members be carried not by the Postal Service but by for-profit shipping companies, and it is funded by two of the biggest: FedEx and UPS. It has also long pushed for the future health care benefits of retired state government workers to be slashed or prefunded, like the Postal Service. It has pushed no bills to require private companies to do the same....
the agency would be in a much stronger financial position had Congress not passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) in 2006, which “requires the Postal Service, which receives no taxpayer subsidies, to prefund its retirees’ health benefits up to the year 2056,” on a 50-year basis. (John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight did an in-depth show on this manufactured crisis earlier this year.) According to the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in 2019: “If the costs of this retiree health care mandate were removed from the USPS financial statements, the Post Office would have reported operating profits in each of the last six years.” “[N]o other entity, private or public, has to make” such provision for future health benefits of current and future retirees so far in advance. Private companies also can change their health benefits without an act of Congress, unlike the Postal Service. “Current reserves of $47.5 billion could be used to pay expected pay-as-you-go retiree health care costs 10-15 years into the future,” IPS noted. The 2006 law also bars the Postal Service from obtaining other revenue by providing “nonpostal services,” such as offering banking services or opening cafes at post offices. And it also limits the ability of the Postal Service to raise rates beyond the rate of inflation. Who championed the bill that imposed this unprecedented financial burden on the Postal Service? Another Koch man, James C. Miller III...
no lnx many
The Real Backstory of Undermining the Postal Service
In 2006, Miller was advising Koch’s newly renamed Americans for Prosperity when he became
the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Postal Service. That’s the year Congress enacted
the PAEA. Former Congressman Tom Davis (R-VA) said the idea to add the pre-funding
requirement came not from Congress but from the White House, supposedly to get a good
score on the cost of the bill from the Congressional Budget Office.
Miller and others celebrated with President George W. Bush when he signed the measure into
law, standing with Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) and other lawmakers looking over his shoulder.
In 2005,the year before the PAEA was passed, the Postal Service reported nearly $1 billion in
profit. Two years later—after the PAEA required it to transfer a $17.1 billion surplus into the new
50-year fund plus $5 billion per year—the agency was in the red.
Meanwhile, two of its rivals,
FedEx and UPS, which charge customers exponentially more for even small packages, had
comparable revenue but profited without the heavy burden of the PAEA.
And this was on top of the fact that when the GOP took over the Senate during President Bush’s
first term Congress “shifted the costs of postal employees’ military service-related pension costs
from the U.S. Treasury to the USPS—a $27 billion obligation.” In the span of three years, 2003-
2006, the GOP saddled the Postal Service with tens of billions of debt.
How could this happen? The PAEA’s massive debt load-up was passed by Congress without a
recorded vote by name. It was not billed as that but was sold as a way to help the Postal Service
“modernize” mail processing.
Who was at the helm of the ship? Senator Susan Collins.
inthepublicinterest.org | The Billionaire Behind Efforts to Kill the U.S. Postal Service 8]
Collins chaired the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, which approved the “reform”
bill in 2006.She also chaired the hearing and committee that approved Miller’s nomination to
the Postal Service’s Board of Governors in 2003.It was Collins who moved Miller’s nomination
forward even though she knew he had expressly called for the privatization of the very agency
he would be governing. Here is their exchange at the hearing:
“Chairman Collins: Mr. Miller, many years ago you expressed the view that perhaps the
private express statutes of the Postal Service, the monopoly, should be repealed. You also
spoke in favor of deregulating some of the Postal Service and allowing private companies to
compete in delivery of mail. Is that still your view?
Mr. Miller: If I have the same information, the same studies, same data, same analysis
that I looked at before, that would exactly be my view. I think anytime you take on a new
responsibility you owe it to yourself or whomever appointed you to that or are responsible for
putting you there, to give it your best shot, to take a new look at things. I will take a new look
at things and I will give you my best judgment.”
In 2006, the year Collins helped Miller (then the Chair of the Board of Governors) pass the PAEA,
one of her five largest donors was one of the five biggest shipping firms, UPS.
Miller used his Senate-confirmed post to help drive the Postal Service toward his dream of
privatization. As leader of the Board of Governors, Miller was responsible for fiscal oversight
of the Postal Service. He had to know that an agency with a net income of nearly $1 billion
the year before would not be able to absorb a new $5 billion expense per year without going
bankrupt—even if some members of Congress did not understand that or read through to
page A-2 of Miller’s “Strategic Transformation Plan,” where revenues were listed.
That plan only mentioned the word “privatization” once, and that was in a footnote to say that
very few stakeholders wanted either privatization or the closing of post offices. However, the
pre-cursor to Miller’s proposal to weigh down the Postal Service with extraordinary debt was
that getting future health liabilities fully funded would make the agency more attractive to
private investors. This plan was not masked in the initial “transformation” proposal issued by
President George W. Bush’s appointee for Postmaster General, John E. “Jack” Potter.
Who is Jack Potter?
Jack Potter—with an MBA from MIT and an economics degree
from Fordham University, whose business programs were led
by a disciple of Koch’s beloved Ludwig von Mises—parlayed his
role at the Postal Service into becoming a CEO now paid more
than $450,000 a year by one of the first entities privatized by
President Reagan, the Metropolitan Washington Airports
Authority.
It had revenues of more than $963 million and
net income of a quarter billion dollars last year, funds that
would have been the public’s prior to 1987 when the Reagan
administration gave it a 50-year lease for Washington National
Airport, Dulles International Airport, and 13,000+ acres.
[inthepublicinterest.org | The Billionaire Behind Efforts to Kill the U.S. Postal Service 9]
That 500+ page proposal to “transform” the Postal Service detailed various paths to privatizing
America’s postal system—even though it admitted that there “is no clear mandate for full
privatization of the Postal Service.” It mentioned privatization 156 times. It recognized that
“retirement and health benefit liabilities” were rising costs. It noted that “[p]rivatization is not
a viable option at this time [because] [w]hile the assets of the Postal Service are great, so are
future retirement liabilities.” It also stated that potential retirement related liabilities would
adversely affect the “valuation” of the Postal Service for an IPO (initial public offering, that is, in a
sale to wealthy stockholders) or “commercialization.”
The proposal also said that “privatization would be more timely” after the Postal Service “honed”
its finances—even though the American people have “strong opposition to privatization.” That
report concluded that a major “private sector concern” would be to “leave all liabilities with
government.”
That’s what the 2006 PAEA was setting the stage for: a legally mandated form of “disaster
capitalism,” a term that would be described by Naomi Klein the following year in her book
“The Shock Doctrine.”
Senator Tom Carper (D-DE)
Sen. Carper later spearheaded a congressional effort in
2009 to provide some relief to the Postal Service “to restructure
the aggressive retiree health prefunding schedule that was
imposed on it in 2006,” although much damage to the agency
was already done by reallocating its reserve and taking
so much cash out of its revenue. As Senator Carper noted:
“That schedule has the Postal Service making enormous
payments of more than $5 billion per year through 2016 to
prefund its future health obligations to its retirees. This is on top
of regular payments of $2 billion or more for current retirees’
premiums.
The combination will be enough to sink many
businesses ….” However, the reform only allowed the Postal Service to
temporarily reduce the payments to $1.4 billion a year and requires it to
repay those deferred billions in payments as of 2016 or put them on its
balance sheet—adding to its debt and making it look insolvent.
The reality is that Miller had been advancing a kind of manufacturedshock doctrine on the
Postal Service long before Klein popularized the term. At the 2014 hearing on his nomination
to a second term on the Board of Governors, he echoed Klein in saying “the stress of the Postal
Service brings forth opportunities.” He said he wanted the job because he had “unfinished
business” with the Postal Service. Miller also thanked Senator McConnell for recommending his
nomination to President Obama (who nominated Miller as part of a bipartisan slate to break
a logjam by McConnell, then the Senate Minority Leader, in confirmations to the Board.)
Miller also said:
“I think it would be best for the world, for the economy, and for the American people if
the Postal Service was de-monopolized and privatized.”
[inthepublicinterest.org | The Billionaire Behind Efforts to Kill the U.S. Postal Service 10]
Miller’s Effort to Kill the Public’s Postal Service Goes Back Decades...
[no lnx]
Long before Miller had an official role governing the Postal Service, privatizing the agency was part of his extreme ideological agenda. For example, in 2001, Miller—as a director of Koch’s Citizens for a Sound Economy—chaired discussions at the Koch-founded Cato Institute pushing privatization. That became the book: “Mail at the Millennium: Will the Postal Service Go Private?” In 1990, as Chairman of the Board of Koch’s Citizens for a Sound Economy, he gave a presentation at Cato titled “The Future of the Postal Service: Continued Rate Increases or Competition?” He told Reason magazine in 1989 when he was a “counselor” to Koch’s Citizens for a Sound Economy that: “We ought to privatize the U.S. Postal Service. There is no reason why the Postal Service should remain part of the federal government. The constitution of the United States authorizes, but does not mandate, that there be a U.S. postal service.”
In July 1988, as the director of OMB, Miller headlined an event for Cato titled “Privatization and the Postal Monopoly.” Inside that event at the luxurious Willard Hotel, Miller urged competition by the private sector for first class mail and repeal of what is known as the “private express” statutes. The American Postal Workers Union (APWU) picketed outside. Miller also used his leadership at OMB to staff Reagan’s Commission on Privatization, which in turn recommended privatizing the Postal Service. In 1985, when Reagan nominated him to be the director of OMB, the APWU, the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), and the National Association of Postmasters all opposed his confirmation based on his support for privatization.
It was Koch’s Citizens for a Sound Economy that helped him get confirmed over the serious objections that unions and others like the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights were raising about his nomination. Koch’s right-hand man, Richard Fink, the head of Citizens for a Sound Economy, testified at the hearing in favor of Miller’s nomination to lead OMB. After the Senate confirmed him, Citizens for a Sound Economy “sponsored” a White House briefing where Miller spoke with Charles Koch and “expressed keen interest” in Citizens for a Sound Economy. At that time, Citizens for a Sound Economy was urging the Reagan administration to implement its recommendations for expanding the impact of the Grace Commission beyond privatizing Conrail, the government’s freight railroads—which Koch’s group took credit for. Citizens for a Sound Economy was also pushing to privatize Washington, D.C.,’s two public owned airports (National and Dulles), the Veterans Administration, the Postal Service, and more...
When Reagan announced the creation of the Commission on Privatization in 1987, he appointed Fink to be one of the few commissioners on it. Within the administration, Miller appointed Ronald Utt to be the first director of privatization at OMB as part of that effort. The Commission made its recommendations in 1988. Utt noted: “With the full support of President Ronald Reagan, we proposed a bold agenda that included the privatization of federal lands, Coast Guard rescue responsibilities, adjudication of federal tax disputes, the U.S. Postal Service, the Naval Petroleum Reserves, the U.S. Helium Reserves, the uranium enrichment program, and many others.” They also recommended the privatization of prisons and public schools.
As head of OMB, Miller campaigned for privatizing the Postal Service in particular. In 1988, as the commission was promoting its recommendations, he wrote a piece for the Cato Institute titled, “It’s Time to Free the Mails.” Miller wrote: “There is no good reason why [the Postal Service] should remain part of the U.S. Government, and no good reason why it should enjoy a monopoly over the delivery of letter mail—any more than a single company should enjoy a monopoly….” As detailed above, Miller was not alone in trying to use the Reagan administration to privatize the Postal Service. Koch’s main political operative, Fink, was advancing that agenda from the outside (as was Cato and the Heritage Foundation, which also received Koch funding). Near the end of Reagan’s second term, Fink welcomed Miller as a new leader of Citizens for a Sound Economy. The Koch-funded George Mason Center for the Study of Public Choice, run by James Buchanan, also offered Miller a job.
For a number of years, Miller was called a “John M. Olin Fellow” in both posts.
Who is Richard Fink?
Charles Koch and Richard Fink go back forty years. Fink recently retired as vice president of Koch Industries where for decades he had held a seat on the board of the second largest privately controlled corporation in the U.S. Koch has been the CEO of the family business for more than 50 years. Fink began his career of political influence as an economics professor at Rutgers University and then George Mason University, where he helped launch what became the Mercatus Center with Koch to help operationalize his agenda through training a “cadre” to influence national policymakers in D.C.
In 1979, Koch created a group called Council for a Competitive Economy and Fink testified before the House Subcommittee on Postal Operations and Services calling for Congress to repeal the government “monopoly” on first class mail. In 1984, Charles Koch staked Fink at the successor to that group, dubbed Citizens for a Sound Economy (which is now called Americans for Prosperity), as a vehicle to influence the Reagan administration to advance Koch’s goals on privatization and other libertarian theories...
Alhough Koch had largely abandoned the Libertarian Party around this time in favor of trying to move the GOP toward his wide-reaching agenda, he did not abandon his policy goals. His agenda was to seek radical changes to limit the power of democratic government, using large steps and small steps to carve or chip away at it through any means available. (ITPI Executive Director, Donald Cohen, has documented how privatization as an economic strategy has grown into a political strategy.) Fink was also the Director of the Koch-funded and -created Center for the Study of Market Processes at George Mason University, which started in 1980. It is now known as the Mercatus Center.
Koch began funding his pet projects at that little-known public school in the D.C. suburbs four decades ago. To date, more than $100 million has come from the Koch fortune to the university, its law school, and other entities associated with the campus, like Koch’s Institute for Humane Studies. In the 1970s, Koch had focused his energies on building up the Libertarian Party (founded by another MIT grad, David Nolan, who joined the fraternity the Kochs had) and creating his own foundation, which became the Cato Institute. Back then, Cato operated almost as an adjunct to the Libertarian Party, with key staff like Ed Crane revolving between the two entities depending on the election season.
Cato also advanced Koch’s privatization ideology and continues to do so to this day, attacking the Postal Service in numerous ways. With Koch also becoming the biggest funder of the Libertarian Party in 1976, its platform expanded to include a host of items aligned with Koch’s agenda. For the first time that year its platform provided: “We propose the abolition of the governmental Postal Service…. Pending abolition, we call for an end to the monopoly system and for allowing free private competition in all aspects of postal service.” That was also in the party’s 1980 platform. That’s the year David Koch ran for vice president and spent more than $2 million to fund the party’s bid for the White House and to pull Reagan to the right.
Although it garnered less than 1 percent of the vote, the Libertarian Party’s sentiments were embraced by Reagan in many ways, such as his famous line at his inauguration that “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” Reagan created the Grace Commission, using the phrase “drain the swamp,” to deputize corporate leaders to identify government functions that could be outsourced or sold off to the private sector. Fink along with Citizens for a Sound Economy used the Grace Commission’s efforts to press for wide privatization. That Commission expressly recommended that the Postal Service outsource thousands of post offices (primarily rural ones) to the private sector to operate as limited service contract stations. That would have been a major step toward privatization, in the early 1980s, while yet another Koch man was pushing to privatize public institutions and functions at all levels of government, at home and abroad...
the Postal Service was not always the target for privatization or the equivalent by GOP-aligned policymakers. That agenda took hold in the 1980s. But the seed was planted a decade before that. In 1968, the libertarian Reason magazine published one of the first articles in the country asking “Why Not a Laissez Faire Postal System?”
Reason embraced the radical idea of getting rid of this public institution as part of its devotion to the libertarian theory that the free market knows best and can do best. This is rooted in part in Friedrich Hayek’s “Constitution of Liberty” (1960) and Milton Friedman’s “Capitalism and Freedom” (1962), two economists Koch has heavily promoted over the years. This line of attack on the Postal Service was very much against the tide of strong bipartisan public support for the post office. In 1970, Congress reaffirmed that the Postal Service was an essential public institution and public service.
Congress also limited its ability to close post offices, particularly in rural areas, even as the Postal Service changed in 1970 from a cabinet position to a government-owned corporation. (Federal Express [now FedEx] was launched in 1971 to provide private courier services for a premium.) In 1970, Congress affirmed that: “The United States Postal Service shall be operated as a basic and fundamental service provided to the people by the Government of the United States, authorized by the Constitution, created by Act of Congress, and supported by the people.”
Congress also said the Service's mission is “to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people. It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all communities.” In 1970, MIT engineer Robert Poole bought Reason and, with Tibor Machan and Manny Klausner, began operating it as a for-profit under the rubric Reason Enterprises. Reason needed ad revenues to survive, and it turns out Koch supplied a substantial portion of them along with loans.
It was Koch who staked Poole at the fledgling Reason in the early 1970s. In Poole’s history of the magazine marking its 10th anniversary in 1978, he thanked Koch, writing: “In the first few years of Reason’s California existence, one of its important sources of security was the long-term commitment of advertising by the Institute for Humane Studies and the Center for Independent Education. Ken Templeton, George Pearson, and Charles Koch of those institutions have been loyal friends and supporters over the years.” Koch himself founded the Center for Independent Education with Pearson in 1970, and then took over the Institute for Humane Studies after F.A. “Baldy” Harper died in 1973. In his tribute, Poole also singled out Koch as among a handful of individual donors who personally supported Reason in its first decade...
who is poole?
privatization was not even a gimmick let alone a word in the dictionary until a business writer named Peter Drucker predicted “reprivatization” of public functions in Europe in the late 1960s.Robert W. Poole Jr., an MIT engineer and fan of Ayn Rand, took it a step further in 1980 by popularizing the term “privatization.” After Robert Poole took over Reason magazine, Koch and his personal assistant, George Pearson, submitted articles to the magazine from its early days. In 1978, after consulting with Charles Koch, Poole co-founded the Reason Foundation, serving as its president and CEO from then until 2000.
He has advised the Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush administrations on privatization and transportation policy. With Koch’s investment in Poole and Reason as his platform, Poole became the national expert on privatization. However—as Mark Ames noted in his profile of how Poole’s fee-based government helped spawn unjust municipalities like Ferguson, Missouri—Poole may have popularized the term but it was Nazi Germany that had coined the word “privatization.” Koch and Poole were aligned in other ways, with both of these MIT-trained engineers seeking to systematically inculcate people with libertarian theories and get those true believers into power.Poole described this goal in his 1971 essay “Leverage Points for Social Change” where he promoted the “permeation” of libertarians into key policy positions, noting that they only accounted for at most 0.05 percent of the U.S. population.
Koch would later note that permeation, or, in his words, “infiltration,” of government would only be successful if the libertarians who got in “reduce[d] government,” unlike Friedman whom Koch said did not. To help mark Reason’s 10th anniversary, Koch also engaged in a colloquy with Poole and others, about the “radical” nature of their theories and the need to attract followers. Koch noted: “For example, with Social Security, we can be very radical and say, ’Abolish Social Security’ … Or we can say, ’Well, it’s very complicated, and therefore we have to one-percent-a year move out of Social Security.’” That issue of the magazine also reprised one of the attacks on the Postal Service’s “first class mail monopoly.” As Poole recently wrote: “From January 1971 through June 1978 we published every month, like clockwork, but by 1977 it was clear that for Reason to have serious impact, we needed full-time paid staff and a serious budget for growth. Tibor, Manny, and I developed the plan for what became the Reason Foundation.
Thanks to an angel investor, we had enough funds to make the transition, and we opened our doors in downtown Santa Barbara in July 1978.” Thanks to research by Nancy MacLean in her book “Democracy in Chains,” we now know who that investor was. None other than Charles Koch—whom Poole didn’t mention in that 2016 retrospective; by that by the time the Koch name had become infamous. I had several visits … to discuss specific ideas the Reagan administration was considering, such as devolving federal functions to state and local government and privatizing the Postal Service. A Think Tank for Liberty (2018), p. 135. inthepublicinterest.org | The
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[Billionaire Behind Efforts to Kill the U.S. Postal Service 15 ]
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“On the tenth anniversary of Reason, in 1978, Poole convened a strategy session. Every man in the room looked to Charles Koch when talk turned to funding an infrastructure of ’professional libertarians,’ for who else could? The Wichita CEO was willing to commit the resources needed, he said, but with one condition: ’that libertarians must remain uncompromisingly radical.’ They had to forswear “the temptation” to “compromise” with those currently in positions of power. Any such conciliation, Koch warned, would ’destroy the movement.’ With Koch’s backing, Poole ’started working full-time for the cause,’ enlisting ’economic reasoning and evidence.’”
It was that meeting that led to the creation of the Reason Foundation, with Poole at the helm. The foundation became the publisher of the magazine and its own “think tank.” In 1979, Reason Foundation started full-scale operations and Poole devoted time to his opus on privatization, a book that melded his prior consulting work with the mission of Reason magazine. That book, “Cutting Back City Hall,” was published in 1980. Poole’s “catalytic” work on privatization helped spur more calls to privatize an array of public functions, including public schools. In his acknowledgements, Poole thanked “the Reason Foundation for allowing me to use their facilities during much of the time this book was in preparation.” But that sentence elided the reality, which was that Poole was the Reason Foundation and Koch was the angel investor in that enterprise to radically change American government. Poole’s book also contained a forward by William E. Simon, president of the John M. Olin Foundation, which had begun funding chairs for “free market” professors at universities across the country.
Simon suggested that municipal fire departments and tennis courts were “a form of local socialism.” Simon noted that Poole’s objective “is truly to subvert” local government functions by replacing them with private businesses, and he expressed the hope that it would “serve as a wellspring for changes that reach state and federal government as well.” Poole’s Koch-backed strategy and tactics would also reach governments beyond these shores, far exceeding Simon’s wishes. According to a biographer of United Kingdom Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher, Poole’s book was seminal to her efforts to privatize or contract out key public functions—except that she refused to privatize the Royal Mail:“The intellectual case for ’contracting out’ came from an American MIT-trained policy wonk, Bob Poole, head of the Reason Foundation in Santa Barbara and author of a little book called ’Cutting Back on City Hall’… Everything—literally everything—could be outsourced and he littered his book with examples and figures…” Twenty-five years later, Thatcher would join Poole in celebrating privatization at the 20th anniversary of Reason’s Annual Privatization Report.”
That annual report was launched a few years after Poole’s book. Reason’s 1986 ”report on the status of privatization to date and important developments of that year … garnered enough attention from policymakers that Messrs. Koch and Poole determined that it was worth continuing.” The Koch that Reason was thanking for that publication was not Charles, however: “Reason owes a debt of gratitude to David Koch, and APR would not have flourished without his commitment to market-based tools that enable individuals, institutions, and societies to survive
[ inthepublicinterest.org | The Billionaire Behind Efforts to Kill the U.S. Postal Service 16]
and prosper. It is thanks to Mr. Koch’s vision and support that the Annual Privatization Report has become the nation’s foremost publication on privatization, outsourcing, and government reform.”
This report was issued on the eve of the push by Charles Koch’s Citizens for a Sound Economy, by his operative Richard Fink—and by James Miller, the OMB director Fink had helped win confirmation— to launch the Commission on Privatization. That commission, created by President Reagan, would recommend privatizing the Postal Service and other government functions. Koch family-controlled foundations have given the Reason Foundation at least $3 million— that is excluding more than a decade of tax filings that are unavailable. That tally also does not include funding from Koch Industries, if any, or from any personal checks from Charles or David Koch. It does not include the amount Charles Koch’s various groups spent on advertising in Reason over the past 40 years. …
Conclusion
The Postal Service has withstood more than two hundred years of dramatic changes in our country—until its very existence became a target of a billionaire devoted to the theory of privatizing government’s public functions in every way possible....
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