Posted by ck2 1 day ago
Yes. That's the point. The administration doesn't care about fixing whatever hypothetical mail ballot fraud may or may not exist; they are doing this to inject chaos into the election results, giving them cover to claim any result they want or even to just throw out the results entirely. Catastrophic problems are the means to that end.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/17/trump-vote-by-mail-...
It is the same tired but sadly effective Republican playbook: take a mostly functioning if imperfect system, break it beyond repair under the guise of fixing or reforming it, use the ongoing disaster to argue that it should be dismantled, rinse and repeat until it’s unsalvageable.
All of these changes are based on the president making comments like the following:
> "the cheating on mail-in voting is legendary,"
Which he has attempted to prove going back years. And every time it's been found that it essentially doesn't happen. And I believe, the few instances of voter fraud that have been found have been majority republicans and not democrats as has been accused.
So to begin with, anyone arguing for these changes need to acknowledge the well established fact that there is effectively zero voter fraud at all levels throughout the country in anyway impacting elections. As has been investigated and shown time and time and time again. If they aren't beginning with the well established state of the world then they are in fact are the one entering with an extremely partisan hat.
Now if their argument is "yes it's true voter fraud has been investigated countless times, and continuously shown to effectively be smaller than a rounding error, does not impact elections, is know to not be a problem, but I still want to make sweeping changes right before an election." Then sure that's a point of discussion. Then I think the simple question then becomes "why"? But if they aren't willing to begin with an accurate discussion of the facts and state of the situation (there is no voter fraud problem), then any comment they make following that has little credibility.
Why is he pushing to outlaw mail-in voting when there is no issue with mail in voting? Is it because one party votes by mail more than the other?
Or the change in the date mail can receives a postmark? Previously mail was transported to the facility to the same day so would get postmarked that day. Now, as this year, mail won't get post-marked the day it's dropped in a mail box - so any zipcode's mail boxes can now be marked as being sent too late to count, even if they were dropped off before election day.
> While we are not changing our postmarking practices, we have made adjustments to our transportation operations that will result in some mailpieces not arriving at our originating processing facilities on the same day that they are mailed. This means that the date on the postmarks applied at our processing facilities will not necessarily match the date on which the customer’s mailpiece was collected by a letter carrier or dropped off at a retail location.
If the administration actually cared about getting an accurate vote, why aren't they opening more voting locations? Why don't they mandate one voting location per every x number of citizens? Why would the Department of Homeland Security decide who is allowed to get ballots via the mail?
If it's so bad, why has the administration failed time and time again to produce any evidence it's actually bad? If it's so horrible, and wide spread why is it impossible to find evidences that supports this? Or shows it overturning elections or anything close?
It's the same scheme. Make a bunch of baseless assertions, repeat them frequently enough and people in an information bubble will begin to believe it. And that's clearly what's happening here. Just like "we've won the war in Iran" 20 times now. And "Iran has agreed to peace deal where they surrender" 15 times now. And how every weekend for months there were claims about the work on Friday that somehow magically fell apart by Monday. And yet somehow there are still people who give these false claims, and the people claiming them, any amount of credibility.
Voter fraud is not a problem in this country. It does not rig elections, it does not sway elections. So sudden last min drastic changes in the voting process right before an election, by someone who has previously attempted a coup (not the protest on the capital but the actual coup attempt), has said they admire the leader of a country who dismantled its democracy (Orban) - and previously pushed the govt to make false claims of vote fraud to keep him in power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot
> The Trump fake electors plot was an attempt by U.S. president Donald Trump and associates to have him remain in power after losing the 2020 United States presidential election. After the results of the election determined Trump had lost, he, his associates, and Republican Party officials in seven battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin[1] – devised a scheme to submit fraudulent certificates of ascertainment to falsely claim Trump had won the Electoral College vote in crucial states. The plot was one of Trump and his associates' attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election.
Then, when that failed:
> Trump pressured the Justice Department to falsely announce it had found election fraud, and he attempted to install a new acting attorney general who had drafted a letter falsely asserting such election fraud had been found, in an attempt to persuade the Georgia legislature to convene and reconsider its Biden electoral votes.
Like I think there are people in such an information bubble that they aren't even aware these are well established facts. Not partisan talking points, but a recounting of facts of the lengths that have already been attempted to remain in power illegally. And now sudden sweeping changes to voting right before an election amid false claims of rigged elections.
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/politics/el...
Watson v. Republican National Committee seems to be the opposite of what you state: ballots received after election day can be counted provided they were postmarked on or before election day.
Curiously, the USPS changed when it postmarks mail this year, resulting in postmark delays. In Washington state, the number of ballots rejected for being late is up 32% compared to 2024.
“He had told me [before the election] he was going to unleash the ‘anomaly in the matrix,’ ” St. Clair says in championed documentarist Alex Gibney’s film, Musk"
Bullshit is produced for the effect saying it will have.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/28/politics/video/the-odds-voter...
So a party calling for voter id is following the will of the people, while politicians opposing the will of the people are justifying the need for a fix, right?
That's a funny way of saying that they support the status quo, which has never been provably linked to large-scale voter fraud.
If you want voter ID, here's the procedure: establish evidence showing that its need outweighs its disadvantages, then pass a bill in Congress, then implement the bill. Signing an Executive Order that demands illegal overreach without justification is not the American way.
Remember the people leading the charge for this are insurrectionists. They don't care about protecting voting or the concept of democracy at all.
> Provide reputable sources, we can discuss it.
His Truth Social account is public. Do we agree that is a reputable source?
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/trum...
I don’t find that article to be particularly worrying.
The issue is not the article, but the president's own words. Do you find it concerning that the president has expressed a desire to cancel elections? Or do you think he was joking?
Follow-up question: was/is he joking about building the wall, mass deportations, eliminating birthright citizenship, or running for a third term?
Manufacturing the appearance of winning is the not-empty threat, rather is what TFA is chronicling.
What about it is "shocking"? Please be specific.
Please note that the alleged justification these changes is widespread voter fraud, which has never been shown to exist at a level even close to significant, despite many years of effort [1].
> the only way to do anything is to shove an executive order through the post office to prevent mail fraud.
Or, ya know, make a persuasive case based on evidence of actual fraud and pass a bill in Congress, the way the country is supposed to work?
> This is a kind of comment I would expect on Reddit and not hn.
Yours is a low-effort riposte if ever there was one.
[1] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/disb...
A humorous double meaning, almost like taking the hat off and putting it back on again.
But seriously I would expect a stronger argument in favor of these changes from proponents like you, something sourced, especially given the trial runs of these encroachments that've been run in a number of red states that haven't found any significant security issues and just turned out to be a waste of taxpayer dollars, time, and trust.
Do your readers a favor and bring something at least as substantive as the article you're commenting on.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
You supplied nothing to back up your extraordinary claims. Your claims are extraordinary given the almost non-existent issues with mail-in voting. But if you'd like to prove otherwise, be my guest.
We have had secure elections for a long time, how is it that the only 2 that Trump has presided over are the ones that are a security concern?
Huh? Survival of what? Are you claiming that Democrat fraud was not found only because the perpetrators are all dead?
I don't know anything about elections, a question worth asking is what would it look like if a conspiracy set out to exploit mail ballots? could detection only originate from a defector?
Also, why didn’t they rig it again in 2024?
Maybe GP is implying that, but that's not what they said, because what you describe is not survivorship bias.
> I don't know anything about elections, a question worth asking is what would it look like if a conspiracy set out to exploit mail ballots? could detection only originate from a defector?
You are asking the wrong question. The correct question is: If mail-in voter fraud cannot be detected, then why do people claim that mail-in voter fraud exists? If there isn't evidence that it exists, then the people who claim that it exists are making statements not based on evidence. In other words, their opinions are either not informed by facts, in which case we should disregard their opinions; or their statements are not sincere expressions of belief, in which case they are liars and we should not trust them.
Why don't you start with some research of your own and outline how such a conspiracy would work and how large it would have to be.
Don't throw out a hypothetical "could it even be caught?" to try to bias people without doing any sort of even cursory glance at how things work.
Hell, while you're at it, please outline other possible conspiracies, and think about if there are potential vulnerabilities that could very require less major coordination than mail-in ballots. (Not even including the 'have a president who constantly tells everyone that if he loses it will be due to fraud to stoke the flames in advance' strategy!)
Mail-in ballots are currently accepted in 23 states [1], including Utah, Kansas, and Florida. Which "side" is that? Please note Donald Trump personally uses the terribly unsecure and unverifiable method of mail-in ballot, so either he thinks it's secure enough, or, uh, is not being totally honest with us.
> resisting all investigations of voting integrity?
Which investigations, specifically, are you referring to? As far as I know, Trump formed a voter integrity commission in his first term which was unable to find any evidence of voter fraud and was therefore subsequently disbanded [2]. Since then, the only source of information on the allegedly widespread voter fraud is from Donald Trump's own mouth.
[1] https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/table-18-states...
[2] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/disb...
what have they found, exactly?
at some point how much more money do you want to burn on investigations w/o any particular new cause?
"unverifiable" ain't exactly true either where i live. you might think there should be more or different verification, sure, start some discussions in your local area. don't bring the federal government into everyone else's after the administration shows a long history of crying wolf and pre-seeding conspiracy theories with "i can't possibly lose" stuff. if you're convinced the states and local municipalities can't run stuff, it should be easy to prove.
and yet. you haven't yet.
(No, I don't support it regardless, but surely even if you do you could recognize that the timeframe is way too short).
There's no "oops I didn't know" or "oops I timed the project wrong" or "oops I forgot about the election deadline" or "oops nobody told me about the court-order prohibiting it", etc.
but it doesn't work...anything then was done under literally the same President we have today?
That's pretty damn hilarious: *don't complain to me about the Trump admin fucking with the voting system on short notice in 2026 since the Trump admin also fucked with the voting system on short notice in 2020!"
(At least there was a major national emergency going on that time...)
---
It's a point in favor of the "malicious" theory, though. Here's arguably the person who would have the most reason to not fuck with things last-minute, who complained at no end about the results, is now making his own last minute changes... hmmmm.... must still believe he got cheated, and is intentionally trying to cheat instead.
I would expect most Americans would see this as grotesquely anti-American, and absolutely against the principals of the country. Instead it barely makes news and is just another "get whatever advantage you can" tactic.
"Has such a small imagination that they can't imagine they wouldn't be the majority" is more like it.
For all the old fears of "we need the senate so big cities don't run the country" they have a massive blind spot of there being less diversity of thought, and more of a monoculture, in suburban and rural areas. And they don't realize that because of this they shouldn't be surprised if not everyone agrees with them.
Anyhow, there's plenty of rich discussion to be had, but you increasingly need to do it in the real world, or on smaller forums/channels. This will likely be an even bigger issue in the future as LLMs will enable full automation of this sort of abuse that will ultimately probably be impossible to stop. In the grand scheme of things we're likely at the tail end of the era where having genuine political discussion online was possible, if not already slightly beyond it.
I don't see that at all. I am engaging with many voices on the other side [1] [2]. Those comments are voted down, yes, but not because "HN hates freedom" or some such, but rather because (a) those opinions are not well informed and (b) HN is broadly upper-class and educated, and therefore not tolerant of uninformed opinions. The only widespread bias I see here is towards constructive and intelligent commenting; and in the current political atmosphere, it's simply not possible to be both intelligent and Republican.
> I suppose that in their mind it's some sort of attempt at manufacturing consent.
What I see in your comment is you are upset that you are on the losing side of an argument and so you're accusing the other side of cheating. Hey, that sounds familiar!
> In the grand scheme of things we're likely at the tail end of the era where having genuine political discussion online was possible, if not already slightly beyond it.
You are probably right, but for reasons entirely unrelated to dumb comments getting downvoted on HN.
Why? Your job is to transfer pieces of mail from one place to another. Just continue that. Everything else is manufacturing a problem where there was none.
Edit: Spelling.
The fact that the USPS would notice elections were being conducted is perverse.
In California's last election, there were 2,758 drop-box locations and 3,546 polling locations. In cities, these are often within walking distance. In rural areas, they might not be so convenient.
So it seems like, at least for returning ballots, any USPS snafus would affect rural voters (which skew Republican) more than urban?
Delivering is another question. I wonder if local governments could drop off ballots if they needed to?
https://electionlab.mit.edu/research/voting-mail-and-absente...
more controversy:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/us/mail-in-voting-states....
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/31/us/politics/postal-servic...
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/02/us/politics/postal-servic...
The president, who is ultimately decided by the custodians of the voting system, is not going to order an audit of the voting system which made them president in the first place as that would paradoxically cast doubt on the president's own legitimacy. The incentives are firmly against this.
And look at the primaries; absolutely rigged. Nobody with power is asking for any audit...
> For instance, the Postal Service has what the whistleblower claims is a "zero percent failure rate."
> Mail workers would scan a sample of a batch of mail ballots — about 400 out of a batch of 10,000 or more — to verify it matches what is in the federal mail ballot portal.
> Under the policy, if even one barcode on a single ballot in the batch doesn't scan properly or the information does not match, the entire batch would be rejected and returned to state election officials so the problem ballot could be addressed, and then the verification process would have to be started again.
The wrong government! Voter rolls etc. are state responsibilities, not a federal ones.
And please, don't spend a second entertaining any crocodile-tears and pearl-clutching from Republicans about how "maybe states don't have rights and need consistent standards" all of a sudden. Nobody with any good-intentions for reform would wait until right before a major election to do something crazy that could disenfranchise millions.
Ex: "Stop being so mean to Bob, he just wanted to help out with platform stability when he stole that SSH key to push an un-reviewed hotfix to prod while betting the company stock would crash on a gambling site."
And no, the USPS is not in the Constitution. Article I Section 8 gives Congress the power "To establish Post Offices and post Roads". They executed that power via legislation. The USPS didn't come into being until 1970, replacing the United States Post Office Department, a branch of the cabinet. The legislation creating the USPS says that it "shall not make any undue or unreasonable discrimination among users of the mails" -- what Trump has tasked it to do is in direct violation of that law.
Oh yeah that'll stop them.
This system would catch it 98,3% of the time. Pretty good, I'd say.
It gets sent back, it gets investigated and fixed, and back it goes.
Am I missing something?