Never letting a crisis go to waste, congressional politicians have seized another issue they have created to foment discord, division and partisanship raising questions about your vote being counted.
Citing the COVID-19 pandemic, Congressional leaders are making "Mail in Voting" and their devotion to the declining U.S. Postal Service the centerpiece of their latest political assault. This is ironic because these same congressional actors have for at least a decade turned a deaf ear to cries from the Postal Service and Congress' own Government Accountability Office for congressional action to reform and preserve the Postal Service.
In May 2020 the GAO reported the U.S. Postal Service lost approximately $78 billion between FY 2007 and 2019. GAO further informed us they have reported since 2010 on the insolvency of the USPS and, "Absent congressional action on critical foundational elements of the USPS business model, USPS's mission and financial solvency are increasingly in peril."
USPS was included by GAO on the High Risk List in 2019 and reiterated their recommendations over the years for Congress to address the constraints and legal restrictions limiting the USPS's efficiency; but, "To date, such a legislative package has not been enacted."
GAO clearly discusses the congressional need to address "constraints and legal restrictions" which "can take years" to implement, GAO never raising short-term congressional bailout funds.
GAO further enlisted the congressionally founded advisory National Bankruptcy Conference (NBC) in this study which concluded that "all roads for doing so [restructuring] lead back to Congress," asserting accountability for USPS solvency squarely on the steps of Capitol Hill.
On the heels of this GAO report, the Postal Service Inspector General (USPS-IG) issued a report on July 7, 2020 questioning the ability of the Postal Service to preform adequately in national "mail in voting."
The report requested by congressional members of both political parties reviewed the mail-in ballots during a recent Wisconsin Primary encompassing the March, April and May time frame. This is before Louis DeJoy was appointed Postmaster General (PMG) by the Postal Service Board of Governors on Jun 16, 2020.
The USPS-IG found less than 1 million of over 1.3 million ballots requested, a 440% increase from the April 2016 election, were returned. Tubs of ballots were discovered after polls closed; Absentee ballots were not delivered to voters; hundreds of ballots were not received in time to be counted, and 24 states have deadlines which "do not provide sufficient time … to generate a ballots" or "put ballots at high risk of not being delivered."
The report concluded locally there remained "issues related to the timeliness of ballots being mailed to voters, correcting misdelivery of ballots, an inability to track ballots, and inconsistent postmarking of ballots" which could potentially transfer to nationwide issues. They also "noted potential [national] concerns with the deadlines set by the states to request absentee ballots, ballots postmarks, ballots mailed without mail tracking technology …"
This gives credence to media reports of 21% of the "mail in ballots" in the New York City primary, as high as 25% in Brooklyn, New York, being declared invalid for a myriad of reasons from late arrivals, lacking postmark and lacking proper signatures. From Virginia with misleading mailings to New Jersey, Ohio, and Texas there have been media reports validating the findings of the USPS-IG report. Nationally this could mean issues with as many as 30 million to 35 million ballots, given there were 140 million ballots cast in the 2016 election, potentially leaving by USPS estimates ballots uncounted in as many as 46 states.
Dr. Anthony Faci stated there is no reason the average person using the same precautions they use shopping in a grocery store cannot vote in person.
Congressional leadership again displays their hypocrisy presenting issues their own GAO confirms Congress created, using their surrogates in the media to divert decades of blame from themselves onto others.
Typically, Congress only offers to needlessly expend billions of your tax dollars to cover up their culpability. All this while demanding "Mail in Voting" which the USPS reports and the Inspector General confirms cannot be validated, while the congressionally supported national health expert states there is no reason people cannot vote in person.
Boss Tweed once said, "As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it?" Boris Bazhanov, Stalin's former personal secretary credits Stalin with, "I regard it as completely unimportant who in the party will vote and how, but it is extremely important who will count the votes and how."
"The right to vote shall not be abridged" is a cornerstone of our form of representative government. Why are Congressional leaders hypocritically championing a flawed system they created that will guarantee a significant probability your right to vote will be abridged or your vote will not be counted?
The above is the opinion of the author and is not meant to reflect the opinion of the US Navy or the U.S. Government.
John M. DeMaggio retired after 30 years of service as a Captain from the U.S. Naval Reserve Intelligence Program. He holds a Bachelor's of Science in Forensic Science from John Jay College and a Master's of Science from Whiting School of Engineering, Johns Hopkins University. Privately consulting in counterterrorism, forensic science, and investigations, he also conducts international counterterrorism training, having retired as a Special Agent in Charge and serving as Co-chairman, Investigative Support and Forensic Subgroup, TSWG, developing interagency counterterrorism technology. He is also an op-ed contributor for The Hill. He previously published "Mitigation of Terrorist Effects on Victims' Motivation" in U.S. Army Counterinsurgency Center Colloquium. Read John M. DeMaggio's Reports — More Here.
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