A whistleblower report alleges that the US Postal Service is implementing a new digital system for mail ballots despite a court order blocking it, and the rushed implementation could lead to a “catastrophic failure” in the mail ballot system, potentially disenfranchising millions of voters.
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David Ho (davidho@mastodon.world)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 23:03:17 JST 
David Ho
- Steve's Place repeated this.
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M.S. Bellows, Jr. (msbellows@c.im)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Sep-2026 09:22:44 JST 
M.S. Bellows, Jr.
Many people are misunderstanding something important about the administration's efforts to block vote-by-mail ("VBM"). The plan isn't to stop completed ballots being RETURNED by mail; it's to stop BLANK ballots being DELIVERED TO VOTERS by mail.
Please think about what that means. If we weren't allowed to cast our ballots by mail, no big deal; we could simply drop our completed ballots in the dropboxes already scattered throughout most (all?) VBM states. But the ban on mailing BLANK ballots TO voters means that states like Oregon, in just over two months, would need to set up in-person voting in hundreds of locations, or at least in-person ballot distribution locations so that people could pick up their ballots and then drop them off again once they're completed. Even setting aside the impact on the elderly, the disabled, etc. and the *increased* risk of fraud, just creating that infrastructure in that timeframe is a Herculean, possibly impossible, task. If the state can't get your ballot to you, how can you vote?
TL;DR: they're not trying to stop vote by mail. They're trying to stop many blue states from voting altogether.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/01/us/politics/whistle-blower-voting-by-mail.html?unlocked_article_code=1.91A.kwS3.DUcieRYbgOZw&smid=nytcore-ios-share
^@davidho
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