VOTER SUPPRESSION

 This started out to be about what is happening to the Post Office, but as I pondered it came to me that this is just another form of voter suppression.  From there my mind went to the phony reasons and false information that mail-in ballots were rife with fraud.  From there my mind jumped to the phony reasons Republicans were giving for reducing polling places and similar.  So I ended up with any voter suppression as being fraudulent.  Makes things easier to lump together.  After this blog is posted I will continue to update/change it because while I like to get to the root of things before expressing an opinion, this is going to take a lot of digging.

Let's start with why anyone would deliberately take actions to deny a vote.  Probably because they can't win on their own merits.  Lying and cheating is part of the game as parties try to  paint/brand the opposition in an unfavorable light.  That's been understood all along, but until recently when a person was caught lying and cheating they faced some consequences.  Now they deny it, says it's fake, or ignore it and continue unabated.  And apparently without consequences.  

The latest news has the Ohio Secretary of State limiting absentee ballot drop boxes to one per county.  This is probably a tempest in a teapot because there is plenty of early day voting and most likely won't affect many people.  But my question is, why issue that order at all?  Seems like each county can handle the situation any way they feel is best.  

There was some assertion by the administration of lots of mail-in fraud in LA County.  But their basis was full of half-truths.  Just because you mail a ballot to a dead person doesn't mean that it is fraudulent.  LA County had 1.5 million ballots mailed to people who had either moved or died, or maybe was actually a dog.  None of those ballots were cast, so essentially there was no fraud.

In 2018 Dodge City moved it's only polling place out of town to make it more difficult for less affluent (that is, Hispanic) people to get to it.  Another county in Kansas reduced polling places from 23 for the primaries to 11 for the general (There will be a separate post about Kansas and the mid-west).There are lots of other examples.  Strangely enough, they are only happening in Republican led states. 

The only real case of fraud came from a Republican operative in North Carolina, which was so extensive and egregious that they re-held the election.

 But getting back to the Post Office, let's start with the fact that in 1970 Congress out-sourced the Post Office (sort of) and made it a separate corporation owned by the government.  That way Congress can hold up their hands and claim innocence but in fact still make the decisions (like a board of directors).  Trying to make it a profitable business is impossible.  That is one reason rural America still has their post offices even though they don't generate their fair share of revenue.  Efficiency is not the same as profitability.  It needs to be efficient, but since it can't sell shares, it is up to Congress to provide funds.  In 2006, on his way out the door, President Bush signed a law that made the Post Office pre-pay health care costs for retirees 75 years into the future.  This poison-pill law saddled the Post Office with a $72 billion debt.  Without this the Post Office would have shown a profit for the last six years.  And since it is "losing" money, that is the basis for the justification of service cuts and the call for privatization.

Moving on to mail-in ballots and cut services.  That could affect states like Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Utah, and Hawaii, among others.  From 2000 to 2019 Oregon had 15 cases of fraud out of 15.5 million votes.  Washington from 2004 to 2010 had 12 cases out of 10.6 million.  Similar numbers for the others.  So fraud isn't a problem. I use these states as examples since they already have vote-by-mail installed. But if you install a Postmaster General (with no postal experience; the previous PGs were career postal employees), with an apparent conflict-of-interest, and with a desire to inflict as much damage on the post office as possible, then you might be able to suppress the vote.  And intensify the call to privatize.  His reorganization displaced or removed 23 career managers.  I suspect one of his "operating units" will manage to increase rates on Amazon, something Trump tried to get the previous PG to do.  He has cut employees, frozen hiring, and is refusing overtime for the remaining over-worked folks.  Naturally, the result is some mail will be slowed down.  There is concern that mail-in ballots will be treated as bulk mail rather than first class.  That could take an additional week to deliver, or sit in the post office for weeks.