I haven’t seen anyone use the phrase “War on Mail” to describe what Donald Trump is doing right now in respect to mail in voting, but considering that conservatives have referred to a so called “War on Christmas” launched by liberals, I figured “War on Mail” might catch on. If it does, I want this Cake post to get the credit! 

Anyways, if you haven’t been following this story, Donald Trump is casting doubt on the electoral process for the 2020 U.S. elections, specifically mail in voting. Due to the pandemic, a larger number of voters are expected to vote by mail than on average. This means voting by mail is going to be an essential part of how the 2020 election is going to be run. 

Donald Trump seems to feel that voting by mail will lead to widespread fraud, but there’s not a lot of data, if any, to support these claims. When you mail in your ballot, you have to sign your name, which is supposed to match your signature on file. It would be very hard to forge a vote by mail. 

There’s a more valid concern about votes not getting counted on time due to an influx of mail, but once again, since the inauguration isn’t until January and we’ve had contested elections that were decided well beyond election day (e.g. Gore vs. Bush), this concern also seems to not carry much weight. States have rules about when votes need to be post-marked by and as long as your vote is post-marked by the designated time, your ballot will count. 

Then, there’s the final concern that not all the votes will get counted and that some ballots will get lost in the mail, never to be heard from again. Of all the concerns out there, this is the most valid since it is conceivable and likely that an increase in mail will lead to a higher percentage of ballots getting lost. States do need to have effective strategies in place to handle the influx of mail, but they have plenty of time to do so. Also, voters can track their ballots and make sure they got received and counted. 

Per CalVoter.org, the leading reasons for votes by mail not counting are because they arrive too late (post-marked after the designated time), the voter forgot to sign the mail ballot envelope, or their signature did not sufficiently match the signature they had on file. None of these are reasons to worry about mail in voting and if anything, these are reasons to feel more confident in the process. There is a vetting process. 

As for the political side of this, Trump’s strategy seems to revolve around casting doubt in the vote by mail process: That it’s ripe for fraud, that votes aren’t going to get counted, and that people should be able to vote the old-fashioned way at the booth if they want. If he loses, he can cry afoul and say he was done in by the fraudulent mail in voting process. 

Ironically, if Trump does lose the election, mail in voting could do him in. But not for the reasons he’s been listing. What could do him in is a lower Republican voting turnout due to a higher percentage of Republican voters not trusting the vote by mail process and thus not voting at all. Perhaps hoping the election won’t count anyways and that Trump will get his way? On the flip side, there’s a much higher percentage of Democrats who not only are comfortable voting by mail, but actually prefer it. 

In a recent article on FiveThirtyEight, it was stated that 78% of Trump supporters see mail in voting as vulnerable to a significant amount of fraud despite the data suggesting otherwise. The article also said that 79 percent of Republican voters preferred to vote in person whereas 51 percent of Democrat voters prefer to vote by mail. The article also added that this could lead to Trump claiming premature victory on election night before being overtaken by mail in voters in the coming days after the election. Maybe that’s his strategy? 

At any rate, it does seem as though Trump’s strategy to discredit voting by mail will backfire on him and potentially the Republican party as a whole. That’s why many Republicans are saying he needs to trust the process and take a chill pill. All this talk of delaying the election (which he can’t do) and curbing voting by mail by executive action (which he also can’t do), only digs Trump into a deeper hole. A hole that he very well may not be able to dig himself out of. 

Trump's assault on mail voting threatens his reelection bidThe president's comments have made his base distrustful of mail voting ahead of an election that may hinge on turnout by mail.www.politico.com

He knows his argument isn’t a valid one but it is one that has the potential to be helpful politically. It’s also a way for him to save face and save his brand name if he bombs the election. He can discredit it and use it to launch his news empire. So many disappointed Trump loyalists would watch his news channel. Watch out Fox News.

I’ve heard the backfire theory before and I hope it turns out to be true. Trump also worries that mail in voters often vote quite early and this gives him little time to recover. Hope he goes down with his ship. Curious what or how the elected Republicans will do if they see him losing. How quickly will they turn on him or will they be loyal to keep his base? Interesting times ahead.

Here's a discussion that includes the mail in problem Trump keeps talking about, but it really focuses on what if trump refuses to concede a loss

this cartoon says it all

Trump’s real goal:

ANALYSIS: Donald Trump wants to discredit the U.S. election, not delay it. - Global NewsDonald Trump's real strategy is to suppress voter turnout and discredit the result any way he can, Jackson Proskow says.apple.news

You are on the money, @cvdavis. Trump is just hoping to discredit the election enough that when/if he loses, he can still maintain the support of his base.

I’ll find more details unless someone else wants to jump in, but apparently Trump has appointed a new postmaster general that is slowing down the mail. Not good.

Sad

Yeah, the new postmaster general is a Trump mega fundraiser who has few qualifications. He's been called to testify in congress in recent days about the slowdown in mail delivery. The worry is that Trump's distaste of the post office and mail-in voting is creating shenanigans.

New Postmaster General Is Top GOP FundraiserLouis DeJoy, a successful North Carolina businessman, has donated millions to Republican candidates, including the Trump campaign.www.npr.org

David Frum said that about 20,000 people are appointed by each president. An even greater percentage of people used to get their job based on who won the election and this raised the number of people who voted because it directly affected the job of someone they knew. Frum argues that the usa needs to move towards having only around 1500 people appointed by a president. He said having these jobs non-partisan professional workforce would reduce the incompetence and partisanship. Regardless of what a person thinks of Frum, it's certainly something to think about. The Republicans may say it's part of the growing deep state (rather than an administrative state) but I wonder how they feel when tens of thousands of people are appointed by the Democrats.

Woah. I didn't know he was a top GOP fundraiser. That doesn't surprise me, but that isn't a good look. Especially if he doesn't have a strong background in mail.

Great point. You would think an organization like the United States Postal Service should be non-partisan.

Has anybody Trump appointed had a strong background in their appointed position? I mean, I'm sure there are some, but I can't remember hearing about any outside of military and judges. Every high-profile appointment I can remember seems to have been a favor.

You make a good point, here.

It could be that the media focuses on the bad choices. Does begin to seem like they’re all bad choices though.

Another week, another Friday night massacre. This time for the post office.

Critics of Trump White House decry latest 'Friday night massacre' as postmaster general sidelines two dozen USPS officialsFormer President Barack Obama has said Trump administration is 'undermining the Postal Service in an election that's going to be dependent on mail-in ballots.'www.marketwatch.com

That should make his chances of winning be reduced further still if Americans are intelligent enough to see what he’s doing. Hopefully people who can see what he’s doing don’t agree with it and see that he’s got to go. Dictatorial if you ask me. Certainly pushing the boundaries of what was once acceptable in the USA. American allies are seeing all this and it’s not helping bolster America’s reputation.

Discrediting was probably a part of it, but for some reason Trumpy doesn't like the USPS. He's been making things hard for them since before he was afraid he might not win the next election. But he admitted that removing the ability to mail in your vote is his strategy for re-election.

On Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump took to Fox Business Network to say the quiet part out loud: He is holding up funding of the U.S. Postal Service because “that means you can't have universal mail-in voting because they’re not equipped to have it.”

. . .

And, of course, we already knew it was hypocritical, because he himself votes absentee, and there is essentially no difference between absentee and mail-in voting.

We will see what happens with this mess. He has a dream of being royalty and might believe that if he can just make it into another term he can eventually restructure things enough to realize his dream of being King Trumpy. I think his actions during this term have made people more determined to vote and people that don't feel like they can trust the postal service will just vote in person despite the pandemic.

That's the shock of it. As soon as you make an issue partisan, half the country hates whatever it was they once liked: health care, masks, the post office, a clean planet, the World Health Organization, veterans, journalists, Mexicans, science, civility...

A busy postal branch in a grocery store that also has a Pete's Coffee inside, here in Silicon Valley near us, just closed. Yesterday I had to mail a package for something I sold on eBay. Big line at the post office I had to divert to. And a sign saying the package could not be processed today. I should have taken a pic, but packages were stacked up behind the clerks helter skelter.

Yes it’s unfortunate that people think of so many things as partisan. Progress can’t be made until this is addressed

Romney breaks with Trump's criticism of mail-in votingSen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) defended mail-in voting on Friday amid criticism from President Trump, saying states should get funds to help bolster their election systems to better handle mail-in ballots.thehill.com

⬆️Mitt Romney has voiced his concerns...

Just from a non-American perspective...

In the UK anyone can apply for a postal vote both for local and general (national) elections. You don't need to have or give a specific reason, you just have to download the form online, fill it in and return it to local government.

You then get a postal vote sent out to you, which needs to be filled in and returned to arrive before 10pm on the day of the election. If you register for a postal vote but then want to deliver it by hand you can still do so on election day.

The thing is that since you receive it weeks before and we live in a country with, just like the USA, a modern and efficient postal system, returning it on time really isn't an issue. Sure, if everyone posts it 48 hours before the deadline then there's a chance that there might be delays but it shouldn't come to that. Very few people make their voting decision that late, just do it earlier.

I don't think I've ever heard any talk of fraud or controversy over postal votes. In the Brexit referendum there were a lot of them because UK citizens living in other European countries obviously wanted to register their vote, and there were some issues with some allegedly not being counted or arriving late, but they were just administrative screwups, not voter fraud as Trump is implying.

Postal voting is perfectly valid and with a few simple precautions is no more susceptible to cheating than voting in person. Online would be a different matter perhaps, and then maybe, just maybe, there could be some substance to the ramblings that Donald pours out, but with postal voting they really are unsubstantiated.

Post office mantra changed to fit the times:

We now got Taylor Swift tweeting about this issue...

Taylor Swift Slams Trump for "Calculated Dismantling" of Postal ServiceThe pop star has a piece of advice for fans: "Vote early."slate.com

Great stuff! Thanks, @S4-John!

You are correct that there really is no legitimate concern about mail in voting being more prone to fraud. On that note, a Trump appointed judge in Pennsylvania is demanding the Trump administration produce legit evidence of mail voting being more prone to fraud within a day, otherwise their lawsuit against Pennsylvania will be thrown out.

That's right. The Trump administration is suing Pennsylvania over mail-in voting. Crazy.

Judge orders Trump campaign to produce evidence of voter fraud in PennsylvaniaA federal judge in Pennsylvania told the Trump campaign and the Republican Party that they must produce evidence they have of vote-by-mail fraud in the state by Friday.www.cnn.com

Montana looks to be responsible for stopping the systematic mail changes (e.g. ripping out mail boxes) that the Trump administration was planning to implement across the entire country. Wild.

Postal Service stops Montana mail changes amid objectionsThe U.S. Postal Service has stopped removing mail drop boxes across Montana after letter carriers and the state's congressional delegation responded with alarm.billingsgazette.com