Re:Stop Panicking about the Post Office
by Fjolsvith on Thursday August 20, 2020 @10:17AM
(#24223493)
It was sarcasm. My point being if they can handle the Christmas rush, they can handle an extra ballot per person once a year.
However, I suspect that the "USPS needs funding" narrative was stoked so congress would provide funds to make sure the blockchain voting system the USPS is implementing runs smooth.
Sarcasm is against the HN CoC.
We have yet to see whether, in its damaged condition, it could still handle the Christmas rush. With sorting machines unplugged and shipped off to warehouses or scrapped, with employees forbidden overtime to handle fluctuations, with hiring frozen, it is far from certain it can still handle votes. That is by design.
Chewing back through the archives of 2019 news, I don't see such a news cycle, or really anyone complaining about extraordinary delays. I do see that the Post Office did an unusual amount of gearing up because the distance between Thanksgiving and Christmas in 2019 shortened the peak shipping window (https://www.marketplace.org/2019/12/05/six-fewer-shipping-da...). But they appear to have handled it fine.
Here's their self-reported tracking metrics through 2019 Q4 on package delivery (https://about.usps.com/what/performance/service-performance/...). No real deviation from their regular numbers indicating a performance drop.
What's our source on the notion that they got crushed by Christmas rush?