Conspiracy? Coincidence? Nope, Just Dirty Politics
By Ed Kociela
If I have my druthers, I opt to send something through the United States Postal Service (USPS) rather than UPS because, for most mailing, when you break it down to dollars and cents, it simply makes more sense. Mail-In Voting.
I mean think of it this way, you have an important document that must be mailed. If it is a standard-sized piece, it will cost you a meager $.55 to have somebody pick it up at your house, have the most reliable transportation system on Earth transport it all the way across the country, and have another set of human hands deliver it to the proper doorstep.
If that ain’t a bargain, I don’t know what is.
Even when it comes to packages up to two pounds, your better price is going to come from the Post Office.
Of course, these guys have lots of practice.
The USPS goes all the way back to 1775 and the Second Continental Congress when Benjamin Franklin was named the first postmaster general. It became an official government entity in 1792 when the Postal Service Act was passed.
Even in this day of email and the lightning speed of the internet, the Post Office remains one of our most essential services.
Many of us receive medications through the mail that are vital to our health and well-being. Your important documents? If not for the USPS, how else would you receive your driver’s license, your license plates, your passport, your title to your home, or those little pieces of paper we collect as part of our life records?
Now, the Post Office has taken on even more importance in our hierarchy of needs as we prepare to do the nation’s business in November and participate in the election in this year of COVID-19, which will rely heavily on mail-in ballots.
That’s where things get a little dicey.
You see, the seeds of suspicion are being sown by an administration that seems to be fiddling with the USPS with one of the president’s men sitting in the catbird seat.
In May, Louis DeJoy was appointed as the 75th U.S. Postmaster General. Since then, he has implemented a series of changes that have altered the efficiency of the service.
DeJoy has instituted changes that have resulted in slower delivery and last week, he announced sweeping changes to the service that includes a hiring freeze at the executive level and a massive reorganization of top postal leadership.
All of this as voters prepare to receive their ballots.
Simultaneously, the president is once again making claims about voter fraud and the dangers of mail-in voting, except, of course, in Florida, where he sends his ballot. None of his claims, despite independent investigation, have been verified.
That hasn’t slowed the inaccurate charges by the president who has gone so far as to threaten to sue states that expand their mail-in voting, claiming they are using COVID to steal the election.
Can we take a reality check here a moment?
Can we step back and do some math?
Can we look at this continuing conspiracy theory in a clearer light?
The USPS employs 663,188 workers, making it the third-largest employer in the nation, behind the federal government and Walmart. There are approximately 31,000 post offices and postal locations across the United States.
You simply cannot buy them all out to pull off such a wide-ranging conspiracy.
Besides, there are safeguards in place to ensure a fair and accurate delivery of the vote.
In Utah, for example, there are safety features built into the system, from ballots that cannot be copied to a check of the signatures on every ballot. You just cannot rig an election in that manner. I would be more concerned about hackers dumping the computer systems before I would worry about fraudulent mail-in ballots.
I understand the concerns about the postal service. I understand how it has been losing money since so many of our communications and transactions have gone online. Quite frankly, I have often wondered why the USPS hasn’t just given appropriate hikes in mail rates to make up for its losses. It could be in for a windfall with mail-in voting.
The bottom line here is the level of trust the Post Office has built over the years.
Without question, we have all lost items through the mail, but not very often. Considering that the Post Office handles 472.1 million pieces of mail each day I’d say they do pretty well. By contrast, how many times have you seen your hard work disappear into cyberspace forever with one errant keystroke? I know I have lost more documents that way than through an error by a postal worker.
No, this whole thing is an attempt to foreshadow the president’s rejection of the election results, to make them suspect before they are even cast, to give him an out should the numbers fall as they are projected at this point.
We have seen this already as he has floated the idea of postponing the election or tacking on time to his term that he says was stolen from him by the Mueller investigation and impeachment proceedings.
It’s just that this time, the United States Postal Service, not the FBI or U.S. intelligence-gathering community, is being targeted.
It is further proof of this president’s disregard for the systems and structure of a government designed to serve all of the people and not just a privileged few.
I’m not a big believer in coincidence or conspiracies on the scale that some people believe. Coincidence is just too random and conspiracies are too vast to keep silent.
That’s why I cannot believe that the changes in the operational procedures and structure of the USPS are just coincidentally entwined with the election and why I find the thought that there is a conspiracy afoot to unseat the president via massive mail-in voter fraud to be incredulous.
That’s why this whole change with De Joy is neither coincidence nor conspiracy.
The transparent pettiness of this presidency belies the odds of coincidence and the overt actions of the postmaster general make it clear what his intentions are, which voids the essence of secrecy, vital to a conspiracy.
No, this is just dirty politics.
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