What’s important: The post office backs up, but the damage has already been done

08/19/2020 USA


From the CNN report: “DeJoy said that some of the proposed decisions mean that retail hours at post offices will not change, mail processing equipment and blue collection boxes will remain in place and no mail processing facilities will be closed.”

This will not be the end of the story.

There are still real questions about how long it will take to reach voters and come back again.

The message that people want to vote by mail is to stop all this is simple: Vote early.

Congress is on the case. DeJoy will now appear Friday in a House of Representatives hearing (where he will have a Republican majority) and next week in a Democratic House committee. Democrats continue to push for an urgent $ 25 billion bailout for USPS. Republicans sounded more open for $ 10 billion.

Do not forget 2016. A new report by the two-part First Chamber Intelligence on Russian interference in the 2016 elections is out and, because it was not focused on issues of crime, it has many never-before-seen spikes, according to CNN’s report:
  1. That then-Trump campaign president Paul Manafort worked with a Russian intelligence officer, and tried to share internal campaign information with Konstantin Kilimnik. The commission says it “receives some information suggesting that Kilimnik may have been linked” to Russia’s 2016 hacking operation and concludes Manafort’s role in the campaign “represented a serious threat to counter-awareness”.
  2. That Trump and senior campaign officials sought prior information about WikiLeaks’ email dumps through Roger Stone, and that Trump spoke with Stone about WikiLeaks, despite the special advice in written responses that he “had no recollection” that they talked about it.
  3. That information provided at the Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 “was part of an operation with broader influence” by the Russian government, although there is no evidence that Trump campaign members knew about it. Two of the Russians who met with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Manafort had “important connections” to the Russian government, including Russian intelligence, and the ties of Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya were “much more extensive and concerning than anything.” was publicly known. ”
The damage of 2020 may have already been done. A new CNN poll shows that Trump’s efforts to undermine Americans’ faith in the process – from all sides – have paid off. From Jennifer Agiesta and Marshall Cohen:

Confidence that votes for president will be counted accurately and counted has dropped significantly since 2016, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS.

And as the coronavirus pandemic begins its sixth month of changing almost every aspect of American life, the poll also finds that a majority of voters prefer to cast their ballots before Election Day, much more than that once did in previous presidential elections.

A majority of Americans (55%) say they do not think President Donald Trump will promise if he loses. A slightly larger majority said so in 2016 (61%), but Trump was not a sitting president at the time. There is almost no unanimity, though, once all states have certified their votes for president, the loser must accept and share the results (87% feel that way, up from 77% in October 2016).

100 years of the 19th amendment

Mood matters. Trump has spent the last few weeks and months making it harder for people to vote in November, but on Tuesday he passed the 19th Amendment, which gave all American women the right to vote in 1920, by forgiving Susan B. Anthony, the suffrage leader who was convicted in 1872 of voting illegally.

Trump routinely expresses the prevailing idea that election fraud will cost him his job in 2020 (it will be voters who do). That’s something a little funny about him forgiving a woman for violating federal election law, even if it was wrong.

Add to that the fact that Trump has trolled progressive women by openly advocating for “prominent housewives.”

She’s been dead since 1906, so Anthony will not be writing a thank you note, but I have spent some time this morning reading about her trial, which she uses to build support for her cause.

The description of the judge who repeatedly tells her to sit down is incredible. She was fined $ 100 but did not pay and the government never asked her.

Women in 2020. This may be too simple, but I’m doing it here. Consider the impact that women now have on American politics. Just as one example, take out the latest CNN Poll, conducted by SSRS and this week.

In it, 50% of registered voters said they were drawn to Biden over Trump, who had the support of 46% of registered voters. That rate for Biden is due to female voters, who prefer him (59%) over Trump (36%).

Conversely, men prefer Trump (56%) over Biden (40%). And now consider the fact that Republicans are actively trying to ensure that fewer people vote.

What the suffrage attempt missed. Here’s an argument from CNN Opinion that is interesting – about the rift between the women’s suffrage movement, the search for racial civil rights and the role of Black women in both efforts.

So many voice amendments

Here is a story from last year about all the ways the constitution has been changed to allow people to vote. When it was ratified, it was mostly survived by states. They treat it badly.

There are not one or two, but SEVEN constitutional amendments that deal directly with who gets to vote and how. And many laws have since been adopted as well.

  • The 12th Amendment, adopted in 1803, laid down more specific rules for elections in presidential elections.
  • The 14th Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, said that men 21 and older could vote unless they participated in an uprising or committed other crimes.
  • The 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, said that men could vote, regardless of race, although African Americans were still largely discriminated against using other methods until the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
  • The 17th Amendment, ratified in 1913, said that senators should be elected by the people and not by legislators. It did not say specifically which people.
  • The 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920, said states could not keep women from voting.
  • The 23rd Amendment, ratified in 1961, said that citizens of Washington, DC, received three election votes (but no representation of the vote in Congress).
  • The 26th Amendment, ratified in 1971, reduced the voting years from 21 to 18, although some states allow people who are 17 to vote when they turn 18 on election day.

In principle, it took almost 200 years to get from “the people” to a system that included civilian male, female and Black voters aged 18 or over.

And things today are not perfect. Far from it. More Americans live in Puerto Rico than several states and DC. They do not get to vote for president unless they move to a state.

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