#tr*mp misleads about mailed balloting

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+ Federal investigators looked into accusations from Project Veritas that Pennsylvania postal workers tampered with mail-in ballots and found that the claims were false. + The findings came in a little-noticed February 26 report from the US Postal Service Office of Inspector General. The report drew widespread attention after being posted by the website 21st Century Postal Worker earlier this week (15-19 March 2021). + The investigation was initially launched after Project Veritas, a far-right political operation seeking to undermine media outlets and tech companies, produced an affidavit from a "whistleblower" postal worker, Richard Hopkins, in November. + Hopkins claimed that he overheard other postal service employees in Erie County, Pennsylvania, backdating ballots that arrived in the mail. In the 2020 election, Pennsylvania counted only mail-in ballots sent by Election Day on

November 3. + Hopkins recanted the affidavit he signed days later.  A video obtained by Insider's Charles Davis showed that Hopkins had other people in the room as he swore to the affidavit over Zoom. + The Inspector General report said Hopkins admitted he never actually heard other employees talking about backdating ballots in the first place."[Hopkins] revised his claims, eventually stating that he had not heard a conversation about ballots at all -- rather, he saw the Postmaster and Supervisor having a discussion and assumed it was about fraudulent ballot backdating," the report says. + "[Hopkins] acknowledged that he had no evidence of any backdated presidential ballots." + The fake story was widely cited by Republicans as a reason to doubt the results of the presidential election. Then-Pres-ident Donald Tr*mp pushed the claims on his now-suspended Twitter account. Sen. Lindsay Graham used it as a basis to request that the Justice Department investigate the election results. + Now-President Joe Biden won the state of Pennsylvania by more than 81,000 votes in the election, and there's no evidence of widespread voter fraud. + The highest-profile case of voter fraud in Pennsylvania is from a man who pretended to be his dead mother to cast an additional vote for Tr*mp in a county he lost anyway. + OIG investigators also said they reviewed all the ballots in the post office where Hopkins worked that were postmarked November 3 and later and did not find any evidence of tampering.

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((( 2020 ballots have been mailed in Washington state. ((( I received, completed, delivered, and verified receipt of my ballot in the greater Seattle area.  Biden-Harris all the way, baby! ((( We must get up, stand up, stand up for our rights -- by voting and holding county clerk officials and volunteers to count all votes completely and accurately! ))) + With early voting underway across the United States and Americans casting ballots by mail at historic numbers, nearly 30 million have already voted with two weeks to go before Election Day, according to a tally by political scientist Michael McDonald of the University of Florida. That represents more than a fifth of the total turnout in 2016. + Even as Americans are turning out in record numbers, many of the rules governing which ballots will be counted and when are still the subject of political and legal wrangling.

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+ Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who joined the court on Tuesday, did not take part in either case. A court spokeswoman said Justice Barrett had not participated “because of the need for a prompt resolution” and “because she has not had time to fully review the parties’ filings.” + The Pennsylvania and North Carolina cases were the latest examples of the complications that Covid-19 has presented to officials preparing for next week’s election and facing a record-setting number of absentee and mail-in ballots cast by voters eager to avoid voting in person during a pandemic.

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+ The coronavirus pandemic has introduced additional barriers to voting for young people, a population that isn't known for turning out in large numbers. Only 43% of citizens ages 18-24 voted in the 2016 election compared to 61.4% of eligible citizens who voted overall, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. + Despite Covid-19 challenges, however, young voters are poised to be a decisive force in the 2020 election with data suggesting record turnout from the group.

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+ As millions of Americans plan to vote by mail in the 2020 election, amid the coronavirus pandemic, Tr*mp has campaigned on the false claim that mail-in voting is riddled with fraud. His campaign has gone so far as to challenge states in court over their mail-in ballot programs. +  Tr*mp’s demand that a final total be delivered on November 3rd is also baseless. Official results have never been completed and certified on the night of the election. In many states, ballots simply have to be postmarked by November 3rd. The current pandemic is expected the delay the final count of votes more than usual. +  The presi-dent’s tweet was decried as part of his ongoing effort to delegitimize ballots not counted by the end of Election Day. +  On Monday, Ivanka Tr*mp posted a photo of herself and husband Jared Kushner brandishing absentee ballots alongside her boss and father, the presi-dent. The couple registered as Republicans for the first time earlier this year, after previously being registered Democrats in New York.

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+ Overall, the report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence provides the most comprehensive assessment of foreign threats to the 2020 elections to date, detailing extensive influence operations by US adversaries, including Russia and Iran, that sought to undermine confidence in the democratic process, in addition to targeting specific presidential candidates. + It also confirms what was largely assumed, and barely hidden, last year: Tr*mp and his closest allies publicly embraced Russia's disinformation campaign against Biden, met with Kremlin-linked figures who were part of the effort, and promoted their conspiracy theories.The report said the most

aggressive foreign attempt to "undercut" Tr*mp came from Iran, but Iran didn't "actively" promote Biden, and their efforts were smaller than the Russian operation. + But while the report concludes that multiple foreign adversaries did attempt to interfere, it also notes there are "no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 US elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results." + That echoes what the Department of Homeland Security's cyber arm said the day after the 2020 presidential election. "We have no evidence any foreign adversary was capable of preventing Americans from voting or changing vote tallies," CISA said at the time. 

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‘A million mail-in ballots could go uncounted this fall’

“A million mail-in ballots could go uncounted this fall. The USPS may not be to blame,” by Evan Halper, Staff Writer,  the Los Angeles Times.  Published online Sept. 11, 2020.

+ WASHINGTON — The controversial new chief of the U.S. Postal Service had not even started his job when a disturbing thing happened to hundreds of thousands of Americans who cast ballots by mail in primary elections this spring.  Their votes were never counted. + The torrent of disenfranchisement provided a worrying prelude to a general election where, for the first time in history, most Americans will probably vote in advance of election day. Amid Pres-ident Tr*mp’s efforts to undermine mail voting and the tumultuous tenure of Louis DeJoy, the Tr*mp loyalist now running the mail, many people see the Postal Service as an obvious culprit. + But election experts say recent controversies surrounding the post office and Tr*mp’s campaign of disinformation about mail-in voting are mostly sideshows. The bigger dangers for voters predate this administration and involve election officials in the states.

+ When ballots get tossed, one of the most common reasons is that states mislead voters into thinking they can safely wait until a day or two before election day to drop them in the mail. Even when the post office is running on all cylinders, that isn’t enough time to guarantee votes will be counted in many states. + “It is unrealistic and wishful thinking by these states,” said Charles Stewart III, a political science professor at MIT who focuses on voting. + “They set the deadline as close as they can to election day, taking the position [that] we are giving people as much opportunity as possible to vote by mail. It has done the opposite. It has set up voters to fail.” + Missing the deadline for ballots to be delivered to election officials was the main reason that about 1 percent of all mail ballots were tossed in 2016. Amid this year’s rapid shift toward mail voting, the percentage has surged higher in some states. More than 5 percent of mail votes were thrown out during this year’s primary in Virginia, for example, according to figures reported by National Public Radio. + In Wisconsin, about 2 percent of ballots — around 23,000 votes — were rejected in the primary. That was a larger share of votes than Trump’s winning margin in the last presidential election. + Nationwide, the number of mail-in voters disenfranchised this year already has exceeded the total for the entire previous presidential election cycle by more than 200,000. With polling suggesting that roughly one-third of voters — perhaps as many as 50 million people — plan to vote by mail, the uptick in discarded ballots is worrisome in an already chaotic election. + Even if all voters sent ballots in by mail in this year’s general election, delivering them would be no problem for a Postal Service that handles 3 billion cards and letters a week during a typical holiday season, said Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union. The key is that voters have to allow enough time for their ballots to arrive, and states need to provide accurate information about the deadlines. + That clearly did not happen during the US primary elections. Between early June and mid-August, more than 1 million ballots were mailed out to voters so late — within a week of primary election day in their state — that they put voters at “high risk” of having their completed ballots arrive too late at election offices to be counted, according to a new report from the post office inspector general. + In 34 states, officials ignore postal service guidance to set a deadline for distributing absentee ballots to voters more than seven days before the election. + Deadlines vary from state to state. California has among the most voter-friendly rules, allowing ballots to be counted for days after an election as long as they are postmarked by election day. + Most states, however, require ballots to arrive by election day, according to a compilation by the National Conference of State Legislatures. States also vary in how easily voters can resolve problems with mail-in ballots, such as a signature that doesn’t precisely match the one on file — another leading cause of ballots being disqualified. + About 30 states have websites that allow voters to track whether their ballot has been received and whether it has been accepted for counting. In August, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla announced the launch of a ballot-tracking tool for state voters. + Elections experts worry that voters aren’t hearing enough about those deadlines and sources of information. They are instead getting dire warnings from lawmakers about post office management issues that have caused serious problems with delivery of medicines, perishable items and even live animals, but which even major postal unions say are not going to disrupt their ability to deliver ballots, especially now that DeJoy — facing a public outcry — has vowed to put some of his plans on hold until after the election. + “I understand the Democrats’ inclination to sound the five-alarm fire here, but you want to make sure that people are confident in their mail ballots,” said Nathaniel Persily, a Stanford professor who co-directs the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project with Stewart. + The message that should be directed at voters, Persily said, is that mail voting will work fine if ballots are mailed back at least a week before election day. + “One of the things I hope the Postal Service [controversy] has done is convince everyone that if they want to vote by mail, they should do it as early as possible,” he said.  (((Remainder omitted.)))

Hyperlink to full story: https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-09-11/usps-turmoil-challenges-mail-vote

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