States operate elections. States decide what is a valid or invalid ballot. USPS is not a state.

So that's the plan - when Democratic states don't comply to hand over their voter records, the postal service simply refuses to deliver their ballots from the Board of Elections. They can't vote if they never get the ballot in the first place.

Must be Tuesday because that's another profound infringement of civil liberties.

If there are discrepancies like addresses? That means my mail in ballot is going to be flagged, because my house is in address limbo (used to be an apartment but not anymore, and USPS has rejected packages being sent to me because I did not put "Apt 1" at the end of my address).

This is just going to disenfranchise those living between addresses and people caught in red tape living in apartment houses.

Truly a shit show. I'm voting in person from now until question marks.

Register as a Republican, and they won't screw with you. Then vote Democrat, and completely screw up their plans.

The big benefit of mail in voting is that I don’t need to prepare in advance of going to the polls, or stand in a big line. I can sit down with my ballot at the kitchen table and read about issues or candidates as I fill it in. Once I’ve finished at my leisure, I take the ballot sealed in the return envelope and drop it off at a nearby polling place - most libraries are great for this and have drop boxes at the ready for a few weeks leading up to Election Day.

Even if I procrastinate to the last minute I can drop the sealed ballot at an in-person polling place on Election Day without waiting in the big line. Mail-in voting is still excellent even if you cut USPS out of the picture for the return portion. Maybe better to call it Mail-Out Voting and make that the standard.

Unless you’re out of state on deployment. Good luck getting Hegseth’s military to deliver any ballots.

Under the timeline sketched out to meet the September 1 deadline, there would only be four days allotted for it to go through a stage in the development process in which potential users of the system can test it out.

I work on a live service video game, where we're constantly releasing updates and new content. But our release pipeline length means new code doesn't go live until it has been under test for at least a couple months. Because if someone finds a bug, there's turnaround time to get it fixed, submitted, built, and re-tested, looking for any potential new issues that were introduced with the fix. That's for a GAME. The idea that they might implement a verification system for MILLIONS of voters across MULTIPLE STATES and only have four days to test it before going live is horrifying.

... judge last week froze the mandates that the states use the system if they want USPS to deliver their ballots, but said USPS could still offer the portal to states that voluntarily want to upload the mail voter information. The Justice Department is appealing that ruling.

... USPS leadership was dismissive of concerns, and, according to the report “insisted that it was easy to understand what was needed and also that there was no time to write down the requirements.”

... When election officials bring ballots to their USPS site for delivery, either the entire batch of ballot envelopes or a sampling will be physically scanned – depending on where the ballots are being dropped, according to the whistleblower. If just a single ballot envelope scan does not align with the information in the portal, USPS will refuse to deliver the entire batch of ballots while the discrepancy is being sorted out.

Neat. I wonder whether they will even tell anyone when their ballots are invalidated.

There will be so many lawsuits over purposely caused issues and other crises by November, the court will cancel it all and maga will say it's just like Zelenskyy did so it's fine. Two months to see if wrong!

Someone should mail all the postmasters and the inspectors a letter reminding them that the concept of qualified immunity doesn't belong to them, that dear leader probably can't even remember who the current postmaster general even is without being told, and that they are not insulated from the finding out.

the courts should be looking at the legality of interfering with mail delivery. A federal offense. It should not require anything more to stop it. The post office is a long and hollowed tradition going back to the birth of the nation. I hate how often I look at our country and think this is nuts.

What they're going to do is "disappear" or delay mailed ballots based on the party the voter is registered as and/or their district and which way that district tends to vote. Not all of them, that would be too obvious. Just enough of them to tilt the election to the repubs.

Don't vote by mail at all if you have any other choice. If you do have a mail-in ballot, hand-deliver it to the election center (the place you would go to vote early) in your city or failing that, drop it in a ballot box, NOT a PO Box. If you're forced to do it by mail, mail it as soon as you possibly can, then I'm pretty sure there's a way you can call and verify it was received at the election center.

But again, don't vote by mail if at all possible. And if possible, go vote early rather than on Election Day--god only knows what they've got planned for that day. If you can, provide rides for people who need them so they can vote early too.

"Shit show" is too charitable a term for something that's being sabotaged on purpose. How the fuck is it that people are still giving the Trump regime any sort of benefit of the doubt?!

Are ballots legally required to be handled by USPS? Is there any reason a state cannot contract out handling of ballots to UPS or FedEx?