I know there are studies that suggest elections tend to favor Republicans when voting becomes more restrictive but my intuition is that in this unique case this is just as devastating to Republicans as Democrats since older folks are not going to stand in line during a pandemic. I see this as a completely idiotic move by the executive branch. Or am I misunderstanding something obvious?

May the goal isn't so much to win as to undermine the very legitimacy of the election.

Oh right, I can't believe that didn't cross my mind. I also sad that I now live in a country where I have to worry about that.

donnie deported to gitmo.

If the intentional mail slowdowns were evenly distributed that would be true, but if some areas (eg cities in battleground states) are targeted for heavier service disruptions, then the postal sabotage will have the desired effect of decreasing Democratic votes while leaving Republican votes less affected.

Old liberals might not want to go out during a pandemic, but old conservatives are convinced that it’s all pretend and even if they thought it was real they’d still go out and expose themselves to corona in order to win.

The older folks that accept the existence of the pandemic wouldn't be voting for Trump anyway. It's a doubling down on the same con.

Am I reading this right? They're talking about potentially disenfranchising almost half the population of the US?

Yes that is correct. They won’t feel bad about it either.

I'm still trying to figure out why we don't vote via smart phones. Surely there had to be some country in the world doing this?

Vote, take a selfie, photo of an ID and submit or something. Can't be that difficult.

From the outside (non-American) I struggle to understand how Trump doesn’t get blamed for this issue he’s making such a fuss about.

Trump is President. He appointed the Postmaster General. He, and his appointee are responsible for the post office.

He could have spent the past 4 years fixing this problem, building the best postal voting system in the world.

He could have spent the past few months (since he brought up the issue) fixing what he saw as the issues. Getting mail delivery up to scratch. Funding the post office effectively, hiring more staff, fixing the ‘arrived too late deadlines’, what ever it takes, in the name of ‘make America great’.

But he’s done the opposite at every opportunity, and continued his temper tantrum about the problem.

Who is this guy?!? If you’re not up to the task of doing the job, “you’re fired” (it’s his bloody catch line). There is no one else to blame. You are the top dog, you have all the power and control you could ever want or need.

I can see how other issues get bogged down in politics and personal opinions. But this one? If the election is a shambles, it happened on YOUR watch. Under YOUR post master general. Running YOUR post office.

I’d be interested to hear how and why this is seen differently, and what opinions are on the ground in the states.

His supporters are glad he’s doing this because (warning: generalization), they consider “the other side’s opinions too dangerous to take the risk they might win.

Needless to say some percentage of ”the other side” feel at least that trumps’s supporters’ ideas are too dangerous, though I don’t many feel that the election should be subverted because of it.

Source for first point: the polemics of various relatives who moved to the US and became US citizens. Source for the second point: two relatives who did the same, but adopted different politics.

I can only speak for myself but it’s all adding up to America becoming a failed state, it feels like something big is coming soon. The younger generation is inheriting an unrecognizable country and at some point there will be massive unrest.

I have some conservative relatives and they appear to believe that every government agency should be defunded because only private corporations can create anything of value and that any problems are being caused by some cabal of communists/liberals who are secretly trying to undermine the police, the troops, and the flag, because they don’t have faith in god that America is the greatest country in the world. They have absolute contempt for poor people, immigrants, anyone who isn’t old and white, and see them as a mob of lowlifes and criminals who must be disciplined and controlled for their own good.

The only way your thinking is off is that you're still giving him the benefit of the doubt. If he had any shred of competence, it would have been easy for him to come out ahead. Covid alone should have created a landslide reelection - defer to the experts, reassure the nation, and enjoy the wartime president boost. But he has no idea how to accomplish anything, only how to be a zero-sum business bully.

Objectively the scumbag is getting blamed, but he doesn't care. He's been running businesses into the ground his entire life. When the news media applies any sort of judgment to his behavior, he cries "fake news" and whines that they are biased. Being impeached and acquitted seems to have emboldened him - there is no other way to remove him short of the next election or a 2nd amendment recall.

Yet there is a death cult that still supports him, because they think he is a savior fighting against the corrupt power structure (while he's really yet another leech). Any bad news they hear about him is a confirmation of the supposed conspiracy against him (see today's buried post about the QAnon cultists: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24158598). The real question is how many of his casual republican base supporters have become quietly disillusioned with the 170k dead and the police riots, which is hard to get a sense of online. The 2016 consensus was that he would not win, and yet he did. Back then I was trying to explain to my democratic friends why he had a decent shot. This time I think he will be sent packing, but it's impossible to know. We're all just holding our breath, waiting, and hoping that the country can recover from all of the damage he has caused.

>He could have spent the past 4 years fixing this problem

He doesn't consider it a problem in the sense you mean.

"President Donald Trump said Thursday that he opposes much-needed funding for the United States Postal Service because he doesn't want to see it used for mail-in voting this November."

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/13/politics/trump-usps-funding-c...

In America, presidents are seen more as king figures than elected officials who are accountable for their actions and can be dismissed easily if they don’t do their jobs like prime ministers are in parliamentary democracies.

One person essentially has sole control of the executive part of the government and the military. It is also very difficult to remove the president from office and essentially impossible unless he does something provably illegal.

>It is also very difficult to remove the president from office and essentially impossible unless he does something provably illegal.

I don't think that is a meaningful sentence. You can say it's "essentially impossible" because apparently nothing will sway Republicans to vote for removal from office recently. But if they could be convinced, then any pretext would suffice.

Ah, damn. Nobody could have seen this coming.

Posts like these really belong on reddit and not HN.

Could you expand?

If it’s “will lead to flames and reddit is happy with that, HN, not so much”, sure.

If there’s another possibility I’d like to learn it. These days I think my flame barrier drops down before I can think of other things :-(

From the HackerNews Guidelines:

What not to post: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

and a little further down: "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That destroys the curiosity this site exists for."

What if people could downvote articles, but it would have no visible effect, only advising moderators?

Or, just track how many downvotes and flagged comments are in a thread and kill anything (the whole thread) that gets even minimal controversy?

If everything that is basically redundant with Reddit or other aggregators was deleted, I think it would be like 60+% at this point, but why not go ahead and try it?

Enforcing "high quality" discussion on low quality topics is manifestly a complete failure.