#postal voting

So, like, that’s a thing.

There is an American corporation that employs 633,108 people, handles 142.6bn pieces of product every year, and holds a 48% global market share in its sector. It constitutes a domestic retail network larger than McDonald’s, Starbucks and Walmart combined, one that spans even the most rural and isolated parts of the United States. It is an iconic brand tremendously popular with the American public. Even during a devastating pandemic, this firm has seen its total third-quarter revenue increase by $547m year over year.

Instead of trumpeting that 3.2% gain, however, the corporation’s CEO ominously warns that the company is “in a financially unsustainable position absent significant fundamental change” and threatens to start scrapping it for parts.

The notion is bizarre. Yet that is exactly what’s happening to the United States Postal Service (USPS). A completely politicized and manufactured crisis threatens to destroy one of the most important institutions in the United States.

The US Post Office Department was created by the federal government soon after the American Revolution with a mission to connect a geographically diverse country and avoid the state censorship that plagued colonial America. In the centuries that followed, it has only expanded that mandate, maintaining tens of thousands of far-flung retail offices and postal boxes, all at no taxpayer expense.

No surprise that 91% of Americans hold a favorable view of the USPS.

Contrary to common tropes of state inefficiency, the post office is both fulfilling a broad social service, far beyond what is expected of any private corporations, and doing so profitably. Those profits are disguised, however, by a 2006 law imposed by Congress that requires the USPS to create a $72bn fund to pay for its post-retirement healthcare costs 75 years into the future. It’s a requirement no other organization, public or private, has to fulfill.

Business leaders often worry about state intervention “picking the winners and losers” of market competition. But the decades-long campaign against the USPS is more like the opposite – the state undermining its own successful project in pursuit of ideologically driven cutbacks and privatization schemes.

The damage being done won’t just affect American consumers, particularly those in rural areas that rely the most on the USPS. It will also affect voters – during a pandemic when voting by mail is more important than ever – and hundreds of thousands of workers.

Postal employment is one of America’s most powerful engines of upward mobility. As early as 1861, the Post Office Department began hiring black employees and maintained that practice throughout the century of racial apartheid that followed the end of slavery. Today, a full quarter of USPS workers are black and the vast majority of them unionized. For these workers, and millions of others, stable public sector employment is the only viable route to union protections, job stability and a decent living.

Given the status of the USPS as one of the largest employers in the United States, a needless austerity program of any size would directly affect every community in the country. But the indirect effects would be just as profound. Collective bargaining influences pay and benefits across sectors, benefiting even non-union workers in private companies like FedEx. USPS unions, such as the American Postal Workers Union, have intervened more widely, too, in defense of social goods enjoyed by all working people and backing Bernie Sanders and his demands for new programs like Medicare for All.

So Nigel Farage and his mob of angry nitwits are protesting the Peterborough Election because - essentially - they can’t believe they lost.

It should be noted that right after the election he called most of his supporters stupid - “The reason we lost is most of the Brexit supporters were too stupid to know what they were voting for” (I may be paraphrasing, but that was pretty much what he said). 

However he has made wild accusations of voter fraud on a large scale, and suggested Labour have used unfair means to win.

Which is bad enough, but his sycophants are taking the ball and running with it.

Much like the people in America who think that because there is an alleged 0.9% fraud with the food stamp system they should “CANCEL THE ENTIRE PROGRAM”, there are now a few people who - because their messiah Nigel has suggested the postal vote system is possibly open to fraud - want the entire postal vote system scrapped. For good.

I got into a discussion about this :- (my comments in bold, his in italics)

The Postal Vote was FIVE times bigger than the average for a Constituency and there were plenty of allegation made that the Votes had been tampered with. IF the Electoral Commission decide to re-run it then hopefully NO Postal votes will be allowed and people will be obliged to prove who they are and that they are entitled to vote.

So you are just going to disenfranchise EVERY disabled person in Peterborough by banning postal votes?

That seems kind of mean, don’t you think?

No, they can be taken to a Polling Station just like everyone else. Necessary if you are going stop electoral fraud.

And those who live out in the middle of no where, fifty miles from their polling station. Are you going to do that? And pay the cost?

Or make someone else pay for your little crusade?

So they want to vote. They get a bus or a lift.

“So this is how democracy ends. With cheering and applause”

OR is it that you have a personal reason NOT to stop any Electoral Fraud?

x-x-x

Because of some allegations - made without any proof, and none that have been proven - he wants to strip postal votes from everyone. Leaving hundreds, maybe thousands of people without a vote. 

And even when I point out the problems, he just assumes that if people want to vote they will find a way - that it is up to a person to get to a polling station, no matter what physical, mental or other problems they might have, if they want to cast their vote.

And then - when I point out he is destroying democracy - he accuses me of being a criminal, and having my own agenda. He doesn’t have any proof of this - he just assumes that if I want to support the idea of postal votes and those who need them I must be a criminal who wants to cheat the system.

This is how democracy dies. How thousands of people lose their right to vote in a single sweep of a pen. Farage and his ilk make unfounded, wild accusations, and soon it balloons into “WE MUST DO SOMETHING TO STOP FRAUD” and so all the methods to make our system more accessible are stripped away until we are back to the days of only straight, white, rich men being allowed to vote.

Because trust me - that’s where this is going. Next will be ID cards, then bans on burkas and other veils and soon bans on anyone who looks a bit dodgy.

I think Farage knows why he lost Peterborough - because in the whole history of UKIP they’ve won what? One seat at Westminster - and the Brexit party has no manifesto. 

However he’s seen how well these kind of tactics - throwing around unfounded accusations and lies - go over in America, and decided to give them a try.

And, from all appearances, they seem to be going quite well.

x-x-x

Just for some background - six years ago I was recovering from heart surgery. I found it hard to stand up for five minutes in a row. I was at home with my girlfriend who didn’t drive (at that time). 

So the idea that I could “get a bus” or “get a lift” to the polling station in the event of an election was ridiculous. The idea that I could walk into the polling station, stand up long enough to vote and walk out again was even more so. I am pretty sure doing so might have killed me, or at the very least put me back in hospital.

If you ban all postal votes, for everyone, tens of thousands of people will be disenfranchised. 

And not just those with physical disabilities, or (for want of a better phrase) psychological problems.Those who will be away on election day, or who are going into hospital and won’t be there to vote.

Our right to vote is an essential part of who we are as citizens, as people of Britain. And the idea that it can be taken from us just because of some unfounded and wild accusations is horrifying.

The Greek government has opened a small window for the possibility that Greeks living abroad to participate in elections through postal voting. Government spokesman, Dimitris Tzanakopoulos, said on Tuesday “the government has made clear from the very beginning that it is positive to the possibility of postal voting to the brain drain Greeks.”

However, the government spokesman did not elaborate on the issue except saying that the government is to take initiative in the next phase.