What’s happening with the United States Postal Service is frightening. In May, Donald Trump appointed one of his unhinged megadonors, Louis DeJoy, to the position of Postmaster General, and DeJoy is implementing sweeping measures to destroy the USPS from within. DeJoy is removing processing plants and mail sorting machines across the country. He’s ordering USPS mailboxes to be removed across the country.
Trump and DeJoy are doing all of this to suppress the vote in the November election. In the middle of a pandemic, there will be a record number of mail-in ballots, and various states have already put measures in place to ensure that the majority of voters will be voting by mail. Because it’s literally a public health issue, and this is an easy one: mail in your ballots. Right? Wrong. And because Trump is trying to steal the election, he’s ruining the USPS and there are literally people who depend on it to get their medication, to pay bills, etc.
Well, Taylor Swift has something to say about the USPS. I don’t hate it at all.
Trump’s calculated dismantling of USPS proves one thing clearly: He is WELL AWARE that we do not want him as our president. He’s chosen to blatantly cheat and put millions of Americans’ lives at risk in an effort to hold on to power.
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) August 15, 2020
Donald Trump’s ineffective leadership gravely worsened the crisis that we are in and he is now taking advantage of it to subvert and destroy our right to vote and vote safely. Request a ballot early. Vote early.
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) August 15, 2020
I’ve already requested a mail-in ballot but more and more, I’m thinking about just going to vote in person because I can and because I feel like… then I won’t have to worry about my absentee ballot and whether or not it was counted. I guess I’ll just wear a mask and use lots of hand sanitizer.
Also, this sh-t feels so apocalyptic, all of these photos of mailboxes being carted off for no reason.
Photo taken in Wisconsin. This is happening right before our eyes. They are sabotaging USPS to sabotage vote by mail. This is massive voter suppression and part of their plan to steal the election. pic.twitter.com/QXLWGIHTrz
— Thomas Kennedy (@tomaskenn) August 15, 2020
I’ve seen 2 posts today supposedly of @USPS mailboxes being removed. One in Manhattan, one in Portland. Given rhetoric coming out of WH, and Trump lackey Postmaster General who just decommissioned 671 mail-sorting machines, this is alarming. What in the hell is going on? pic.twitter.com/y7t76XuLKE
— Ana Navarro-Cárdenas (@ananavarro) August 14, 2020
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, WENN.
America officially is a 3rd world country and UN needs to intervene to ensure a safe election.
I never thought that I would ever see or think this in my lifetime, but you are exactly correct. The US needs UN intervention.
Hed remove us from the UN before letting that happen.
The US is one of the founding nations and we’re one of the 5 permanent Security Council Members. He literally cannot remove us from the UN.
But the other nations can step in and take over for a while.
Nancy Pelosi is seriously considering calling back to work the House so they can address the USPS mess. It’s not a coincidence that this is happening when they are on recess.
She should do it! what is happening with the USPS is a clear strategy to manipulate the Nov elections. As far as I am concerned, I would walk on anything to vote orange man OUT! enough is enough
Even some moderate republicans are turning against him, I hope they all vote Biden……Trump does not have the character to be president of our country!
What is she waiting for? Seriously, press pause on your vacation, Nancy!
Guys, as a German I would just like to say the rest of the world is also white-knuckling this sh*t until November. The US is too powerful for us not to care and we do care. You’re really not alone. Aside from the pandemic (never thought I’d say those words) we will also still have to deal with Brexit. Not to mention crumbling economies, record numbers of refugees worldwide and…. oh right, climate change.
PLEASE do everything you can to remove this turd of a president. I know you will but still.
Yes what are the dems waiting for! I can’t take this anymore!
We are emmy. Phone calls, outreach, protesting, support. We know our relationship with Germany was good and do not want to lose it. Exhaustion seems to be our middle name these days. The majority of us in the US want collaboration and unification. Stay with us. 🙂
Pelosi has called back the House.
@emmy. Thank you. Would you please beg your government to release any evidence they have that would do something to help us? We all know every country spies on every other country; please help us. Please.
I literally said this to a friend last night.
He obviously wants to steal an election but don’t forget DeJoy and other Trump donors have a financial interest in dismantling the Post Office. USPS is worth a lot of money and shipping companies will be able to charge 5x as much once it’s gone. Every one is scratching each other’s backs here.
You’re absolutely right. The added benefit is he gets to privatize the system all for personal profit.
I was filling out the paper work to receive a mail in ballot and my husband stopped me. This was two weeks ago. I’ve been buying stamps and mailing letters to friends.
That’s scary. He has no right to do that! Your vote is your vote and if it’s different than his, so be it. You have a right to your own choices.
He wants to make sure her vote is counted. I am really having second thoughts about requesting a mail-in ballot.
Your husband has no right to tell you how to vote.
I don’t think her husband is telling her how to vote, I think her husband stopped her because he’s worried her vote won’t be counted if mailed.
@El that’s how I took it as well – hopefully that’s what happened.
Just because you receive it in the mail doesn’t mean you have to return it that way. There are drop-boxes that will bypass the USPS. I’m sure you don’t want to condemn yourself to HAVING to stand in line on election day.
I am voting in person in full mask gloves and bring my own pen. I want to see my ballot go into that vote counting machine.
If you vote by mail, make sure to track your ballot. Type “track my ballot” and your state into Google and the correct site should come up. I just did this and it showed that my ballot was accepted from the Aug 4th primary.
Thanks for this. Will do immediately and will pass on!
I don’t know the American political system very well but I thought it had a series of checks and balances. Trump seems to be operating as a dictator with no checks or balances. Why can’t someone stop what’s happening with the USPS? Can’t it be questioned in the senate or house of reps? Is a national postal service in your constitution?
Our representatives are on a two week vacation right now.
Everything and everyone sucks.
The checks and balances are gone:
1.) Republicans have controlled the Senate since 2010. The Senate is the second house of Congress and can block any legislation from the House, the only part of Congress Democrats control. The founding fathers never intended this few people to represent the US is part of the problem, but they also never considered what happens if an entire party in Congress itself becomes compromised. The current setup literally installs more voting power in states with lower populations at this point.
2.) The Senate purposefully blocked and stole a court seat from Obama. The Supreme Court is now conservative leaning. We’re relying mainly on Roberts, a conservative, to have a sense of outrage over the politicization.
3.). The electoral college is a failed model at this point. Twice in twenty years, it has overridden the popular vote and fallen down on its intended responsibility to keep people like Trump out of office.
4.). Decades of gerrymandering and voter suppression have have given disproportionate representation to the minority and generated voter apathy in others. The USPS would open up voting to far more people and be harder to suppress, which is why they are fighting it.
This is a political coup decades in the making. People have been warned about this since the 2000s, if not earlier. A lot of them just didn’t want to listen.
@veronica, I knew all of this but seeing it written down is so depressing. What recourse do we have? I feel so powerless.
I’m so worried. I’m trying to have hope but it’s seeming futile. We can’t bear another 4 years of this admin it would be catastrophic for us all.
@nina, same. I feel sick reading this, sick. What can we do at this point? How these magats don’t see who they are enriching and voting against their best interests all in the name of feeling better about themselves because they are white and think they are being protected, oh and abortion being their number one issue with guns coming a close second has long surpassed my understanding. Most of the magats I know have pre existing conditions, are not wealthy by any means, have used a social program at one point in their lives, are collecting social security, or are on Medicaid or Medicare. And it’s not like dump and his party have hidden the fact that they want to dismantle all of these programs, they say it out loud! I will be masking up and voting in person even though I don’t go anywhere because of my health and the health of one of my kids but I have to do something and I definitely don’t trust my state to care about making sure everyone’s vote counts.
Some states have drop off boxes for mail voting. Other states have early voting. Check your state’s rules through your city/town registrar and state’s Secretary of State office. Don’t trust what you see others telling you, verify! Every state is different.
ETA and check your state filing deadlines!
Trump is playing with drop boxes too. He’s suing in PA and what they’re proposing is 1 box in Philadelphia (>1million voters) and another really large county. There are countersuits but we’ll see how this plays out. OH already caved and has limited dropboxes.
I think early voting is the key. I’ve decided to vote in person even though I’m high risk for COVID but my vote will not be stolen. My only fear is that Russia (or Jared’s BFF the Saudi Prince) are ready to interfere with electronic votes and that maybe a small part of the reason they’re driving people to vote in-person.
Either way we need to protest before the elections b/c once a dictator steals it, it’s too late and/or too hard.
American friends we are genuinely scared for you. The United States is a third world country at this point and yes, it does require intervention. I cannot believe what it has all come down to. Terrifying. Things aren’t perfect in Canada but this is something we could expect only in North Korea.
I don’t trust the security of ballots sitting around for weeks in states totally controlled by Rethugs.
Also if you are well and can take the time off work, volunteer at a polling place. They historically rely on retired volunteers who may be staying away from crowds due to COVID. If the polling places are understaffed that will be a problem too.
I did this for our (MI) primary in August. You’re supposed to have a minimum of 3 workers per precinct. We only had 2 and neither of us had ever done it before. Luckily there were 5 more precincts using the same school so the experienced folk would check on us periodically.
This article has good info on casting your ballot without using the postal service
Four Ways to Safely Cast Your Ballot Without USPS
https://www.democracydocket.com/2020/08/usps-delays/
Thank you for this, Edna. I tweeted it out and I hope others here do, too!
I’ve also tweeted out that I think state Governors need to open stadiums and HUGE parking lots as tented/canopied polling places in multiple locations in every city, to give everyone a “close enough” polling place in open spaces (to help reduce long lines).
Also, as most volunteers that man the polls are elderly, the Governors should also recruit/pay voting age college age kids, who seem to be less vulnerable, to man the polls.
The Red Sox have offered Fenway Park for that purpose.
I thought working the polls was fully a volunteer position. I was halfway through the training session before I found out that we get paid $200+. Just don’t think about the fact that it’s 18 hours. 🙂
Good on ya, Taylor.
Presuming my ballot, along with my husband’s, arrives here in a few days, we’re voting immediately and hand delivering them to the correct office.
I never want to hear from another GOP that they respect the Constitution. The USPS is a CONSTITUTIONALLY MANDATED agency. Until they started trying to ruin it, it was running fine, and in fact had several amazing ideas for how to increase profitability and usefulness. The most memorable idea was to make it basically a low cost bank with the advantages being that USPS offices are everywhere, including rural and urban neighborhoods that are under- or un-served by banks or are only served by payday loan places that aren’t banks at all.
Voting by mail isn’t safe except in Florida where Trump votes by mail. Ugh.
I’ve started reading “what happens if he wins” articles to prepare myself.
I’ve requested an absentee ballot from my home state of Florida. I’m currently in CO and not sure I will go back until Covid positivity rates are under 5%. However, if I do go home, I can drop off my ballot at the Board of Elections in my county. Do NOT drop it off at a polling place in Florida on election day, otherwise it will not be counted.
If you mail it, mail it THREE weeks early and track it. I’m not letting the GOP steal this election.
The USPS is also one of the strongest public sector unions left. It provides tens of thousands of decent paying jobs with good health care and pensions. And the republicans just can’t stand it.
The Postal Workers’ Union just endorsed Biden, IIRC.
Do Republicans really want a constant state of protests for the next four years? Trump is not going to be accepted as the winner and John Roberts is not a fan. The military won’t do Trump’s dirty work against American citizens. Retirees are not going to go along with ending Social Security. AARP has already sent out a letter. It’s over. Someone needs to get that through to Trump but the country has reached its breaking point.
I think their primary goal is the courts and getting them packed with conservative judges. 4 more years would facilitate a lot of that.
We (Singapore) managed to vote during the pandemic without a huge jump in community cases (although it was unnecessary to call for one). But the elections dept instituted scheduled voting and strict controls. If you wish to vote in person remember to mask up, minimise your touching and lots of hand sanitizer. If you’re super paranoid then shower immediately upon returning home.
No offense, but the GOP has mismanaged the pandemic so badly that our numbers are like joke bad. Voting by mail would be about a million times safer, even following safety protocol.
In Texas you aren’t even allowed to vote by mail unless you’re 65 or older, or have a certified medical reason. Guess what? The state refuses to recognize Covid as a certified medical reason. We have tens of thousands of people in the hospital with covid, many of whom are Black and Latino, many of whom are conscious and able to vote, but are not allowed to vote by mail and can’t go in person. We had a primary this summer and it was a problem–the state basically disenfranchised all of them. Covid isn’t going to get better in November, so…
I did go vote in the primary in person and it was surprisingly easy and not scary. 6 feet apart, hand sanitizer. The hardest part was how long the line was due to social distancing, and for me the stressful part was trying to understand the poll worker’s instructions with a mask on (I’m mostly deaf and rely on lip reading to help my hearing aids).
That said, I live in a white middle class area very close to a polling location. It’s going to be a lot harder in November.
I’m pretty scared we aren’t going to get a real election. Even if Biden wins, Trump is going to contest the results. There’s an article in Slate right now about all the worst case scenarios and how we can prevent them. Worth reading.
One thing this moron doesn’t seem to realize is that the places which rely on USPS the most are the rural areas which support him and overwhelmingly vote Republican. Profit driven shipping companies don’t invest major operational infrastructure where they will always be taking a loss in revenue.
Just like Republicans who always want to cut funding to public radio don’t seem to understand that public radio is where their rural base get important local news like weather forecasts, even reports about cattle crossing highways.
I agree. My in-laws lives in a very remote, rural part of the country. Shipping them a package using anything other than USPS is obscenely expensive. I don’t know what they would do if there were no postal service.
when will there be a reckoning for this troll? He should be tried for war crimes, end of story, they all should-family, Pompeo, Barr, McConnell… lock em up and throw the dern key away. I am nervous about mail-in bc now that trump has been told he can’t just remove mailboxes i don’t trust that he doesn’t have another method he’s using to cheat. I live in Massachusetts. My mom who also lives in Mass sent me a letter. It took 8 days to get to me. 8 business days. Should have been 2. Something isn’t right and I don’t know what to do, except i will vote hell or high water.
I have had Amazon packages via USPS that have been returned to sender after not being delivered to me for over a month. Other things have just taken several weeks extra
For packages that are getting tracked, we are getting notifications that the package couldn’t be delivered – however the notification is early in the day, timed before the listed delivery attempt. This is happening repeatedly.
I ordered a dvd from a vendor in Arizona-1660 miles to my house in Alabama. Took 4 1/2 weeks by USPS. I followed the tracking all the way. It sat in AZ for six days, when it finally got to Atlanta it sat there for fourteen days, then when it got to Mobile it moved around to five different sorting stations before hitting my mailbox. DeJoy has cut overtime and ordered post offices to just let things sit before getting into the system.
The vendor told me he’d had that problem a lot recently.
Another thing people need to look into is the post mark rules for your particular state.
Google: Pennsylvania – Postmarks- Mail in ballot- lawsuit
Also Google The New Yorker magazine -post office
It’s an eye-opener ladies an eye-opener.
Please DO NOT believe that post in Wisconsin. I’m a reporter here. I looked into it and found that’s in Hartford, at Hartford Finishing Inc., where they powder-coat and refinish mailboxes. Google Street view shows they have been there for a while. There are legitimate instances of this happening. This is not one of them. We do not want the GOP discrediting all of it because one photo was spread with misinformation.
I thought the photo could be a hoax also. By the photo, you have no idea where the mailboxes will be sent to. Are they being delivered to a community or being removed? I don’t believe photos unless i see it on the national news or on CNN.
I’ve never cared about Taylor Swift but this is great. She’s got a zillion followers. Thanks girl.
I don’t have the mental capacity today to deal with this (I just watched Jared Kushner spew his bullshit on Face the Nation and my brain hurts) so I’m just gonna go with a superficial comment: In the header pic TS looks like a young Morgan Fairchild. That is all.
I know! It does hurt your brain! Love your antidote to the problem!
When I lived in CA, I would drop my absentee ballot off at a polling place. You get to bypass the line and drop it in a box inside (and get a sticker!). Now that I live in WA, which is all mail in voting, I still drop my ballot off at an elections drop box, even though it’s free to mail.
Everyone should google elections and their county to find drop boxes and polling places so you know where to drop off your absentee/mail in ballot.
I live in Colorado, which has been doing mail-in ballots for a while now. But I like to go to our local city hall and drop my ballot in the box, just because I like that physical action of participating in a democracy. (And wearing my sticker too!) They have an inside box and also an outside box, which is particularly helpful this year.
The Colorado Secretary of State has been offering advice to other states on setting up a mail-in system. Unfortunately, I don’t think she has any solution for a fascist take-over of the US Postal Service. Congress needs to convene right now, and the Republicans need to finally choose country over party.
I barely leave my house but I will be voting in person just to be sure my vote is cast. Voting early or hand delivering your absentee ballot are also good ideas, but I just personally feel best pressing those buttons myself. I’m glad Taylor is spreading the word on options, though — her voice matters and people listen to her.
This is a nightmare and a crisis, truly. I am so fearful of what four more years of Trump will do to this country in so many ways, but primarily how many more unnecessary COVID deaths there will be. We’re never getting out from under this pandemic with him in charge. It’s ridiculous that we know for a fact he will rig the election and are left to our own devices to try to stop it.
I agree it is a nightmare and a crisis. It will be very messy for the next four years no matter who wins because the Republicans that voted for Trump will make it intolerable if Biden wins.
Same here. I can vote October 13th and I will be there when they open.
Please please anyone and everyone with reasonable friends, family, colleagues in the U.S. – pressure people to vote. Particularly my generation (Millennials). The only way our system works is if politicians are forced to listen to their constituents under threat of being tossed in the next cycle, and unfortunately this has not been the case for quite some time. I don’t care if people aren’t jazzed about the candidate, I don’t care if it interferes with a work schedule, etc – those who have not been stripped of the right to vote MUST sacrifice and show up and vote on behalf of all of the Black communities, Native American communities, and all whose voices have been silenced outright by one party that has been emboldened due to the disorganization of the other. Yes – there is blame on all sides for where we are now, but we will collapse under 4 more years of the right’s assault on our system and people.
My feeling is that Trump & GOP are trying to discourage mail-in ballots because those are hand-marked and cannot be tampered with.
IN has a stupid republican governor – who has decided COVID is not a valid excuse for mail-in voting. We recently found out my husband has a kidney auto immune disease – and he’s on a regimen of high dose steroids among other stuff for at least 6 months. But you can bet your ass we’ll be at the polls, masks, glasses or shields and a hell of a lot of sanitizer. Voting in the primary was super simple, but I’m admittedly more worried going in this time.
Even if we have the election and Biden wins, there is no way Trump Is leaving! We need to have a plan now about what we are going to do when this happens. Do we trust the military to drag his bloated ass out of the White House or are they going to back him?! I’m truly terrified and can’t believe this is happening here in the US. What if he calls up armed militia of his supporters and they start attacking places? I’m trying not to panic but my mind is running wild with what if’s. I truly hope a reckoning is coming and we can restore order and get adults back into the White House.
I just can’t believe that one of our oldest institutions, the USPS, which has been around since BEFORE we became a country, is actually being dismantled by this reality show clown and his ridiculously stupid administration! We have got to stop this circus!!!
It’s so distressing. I miss the days when we didn’t have to worry about the US government actively trying to dismantle American democracy. Superficial sidenote: it still amazes me that Taylor continues to have a bad haircut.