But besides all that: There is simply no scenario where allowing the USPS to half-fail improves the situation.
Even if the USPS was running perfectly, this election would still have unusually low trust, because of the pandemic and because of our especially toxic political climate. Adding a hobbled USPS to the mix makes things much worse.
Lots of people are saying Trump is trying to "muddy the waters" of the election. I suppose Trumps motivation may be debated, but I think the result is clear: A half functioning USPS will "muddy the waters" of the election result. Does anyone disagree that this will be the result? Even if (being charitable) that was not the intention.
> “We are aware that some of the mailers may have directed the return envelopes to the wrong election offices.”
Nothing is fraud if you're naive/charitable enough in how you interpret things.
> Ballot-printing firms couldn’t keep up with demand, and the already rickety U.S. Postal Service didn’t move the ballots to and from voters quickly enough.
>> Patel said his campaign is looking at thousands of other votes that seem to be missing postmarks entirely—a post-office error
Read your own link.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-13/trump-app...
It will be interesting to see what they submit.
Trump recently appointed a new Postmaster General which is reportedly making a lot of changes. This is now a political issue because many believe the changes are politically motivated due to the upcoming election during a pandemic when, not surprisingly, a lot of people will vote by mail.
It's especially concerning because we are clearly on a course which will lead to exceptionally low confidence in the results of the election, no matter what happens. So even if the USPS isn't profitable, it seems worth while to at least prop it up for a few more months so we can have a fair election and (equally important) have the results be trusted by the people.