In August of this year, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy had to answer questions to Congress about his decision to slow down the mail, dismantle and scrap vital mail sorting machines and remove many blue mail drop boxes from the streets. All this during a global pandemic and in an election year, where it was shaping up that many millions of people would choose to vote by mail.
He answered that this was a cost cutting measure to make the U.S. Post Office run more efficiently, that it had been approved years ago and that it definitely would not affect the effectiveness of the Post Office. Any high volumes of mail, like mail-in ballots requested by voters as well as the filled out ballots that need to be returned, would easily be handled and delivered on time to where they needed to be.
While Election mail is stacking up in Florida Post offices, DeJoy and the Post Office has been ordered by a Judge in Tennessee to “stop reforms that slow down the mail before Election Day.”
There is more and more news coming out that voters have not received mail-in ballots that they requested weeks ago or news of mail-in ballots that are stuck in the mail service somewhere.
This is no great surprise, considering that DeJoy was a major fundraiser and donor to Donald Trump, the only President to ever question the legality of absentee or mail-in voting, although that is how he himself has voted for years, or to call our elections fraudulent and rigged, if he loses.
In my opinion, DeJoy has done great harm to this election and MUST be held accountable!
It is simply outrageous that here in the USA, where we pride ourselves to have free and fair elections, the electoral process was allowed to become as undermined and unfair as it has, all due to underhanded and sneaky acts of the Republican Party.
Republicans have changed the laws in many states, making it more difficult, especially for black and brown voters to cast their vote. They have manipulated voting districts through gerrymandering to marginalize certain parts of the population, you guessed it, those folks are mostly black and brown. They make it extremely difficult for convicted felons who have paid their debt to society from having their right-to-vote returned to them and you guessed it again, those populations are also overwhelmingly black or brown people.
Now the Republicans want to challenge the 2020 election in the courts, where they have for decades installed right wing, ultra conservative judges. They are hoping that these judges will now rule in their favor when they challenge the validity of votes or the voting process. If a contested election process makes it all the way to the Supreme Court, Trump and the Republicans are hoping that the court will award Trump the presidency. This plan may very well work out because there has already been a judgements made by the U.S. Supreme Court that points into this direction. They ruled that in Wisconsin, “absentee ballots have to be received by 8 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 3.”
How can any votes that have been cast before or on Election Day not be counted, simply because they don’t get to the election office before midnight on Election Day? Mail-in or Absentee voting for example used to be a standard practice for service members who are serving overseas. We never stopped counting votes simply because the clock struck midnight on Election Day. This is insane, especially in light of Louis DeJoy having nefariously worked for months to derail the U.S. Postal Service and slowing down the mail.
In my opinion, Democrats should go to court and sue for a ruling that “all ballots received by any Federal or State government agency, postmarked before or on Election Day, must be delivered to the proper election office to be counted. A reasonable time period past Election Day should be assessed, by which the counting process can be declared as completed. This would mean that any ballot that is stuck somewhere in the U.S. Postal Service is still valid after Election Day and must be delivered to the election office in a timely manner.
Think about it, some states have been voting by mail and held in-person early voting for weeks. This process ends on Election Day, the last day to cast your vote. The vote count starts when the ballot places close but that does not mean that the count stops at midnight. That would be a ridiculously short period of time. If the ballots close at 7pm, election workers would have only five hours to tally votes.
Just like the voting procedure is spread out over several weeks, counting ballots over an appropriate period of time, to allow for any ballots that arrive by mail after Election Day, should be a no-brainer, as long as those ballots are postmarked on or before Election Day.
