California remains locked in a legal fight with the Trump administration over the president’s push to impose new restrictions on universal mail-in voting. The dispute has left some voters wondering whether mail ballots will even be an option for the November 3 election, and if so, whether it’s still safe to use one.

The short answer from election officials: yes and yes. Mail voting will remain available this year, and it remains a secure and generally reliable method of casting a ballot. Still, county registrars are encouraging voters not to wait until the deadline to return their ballots, given the uncertainty swirling around the U.S. Postal Service’s role in the process.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on whether President Trump can direct the Postal Service to restrict mail-in voting ahead of the midterms. Trump has proposed creating a federal database of registered voters that the Postal Service would use to verify that mail ballots are delivered only to eligible U.S. citizens. Under his plan, the Postal Service could refuse to deliver ballots in states that don’t share that voter information.

The legal battle, which has dragged on for months, has left voters — and even some election officials — confused, something voting rights advocates say may be the point.

Despite the uncertainty, California election officials insist the state is prepared to run its elections smoothly no matter how the Supreme Court rules. County registrars are monitoring the litigation closely, but they are also moving forward with plans to mail ballots as usual ahead of the October 5 deadline. State and local officials are encouraging voters worried about postal delays to vote early and take advantage of California’s other options, including official drop boxes and in-person voting centers.

“As we do in every election, we have contingency plans and backup plans in place,” said Tricia Webber, Santa Cruz County’s clerk and registrar of voters and president of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials.

Some counties, including Santa Cruz and Los Angeles, are looking into setting up temporary voting centers where residents could request and drop off ballots in person. In Santa Cruz County, Webber said her office is working on plans to send its mobile voting unit around the county to give residents another way to cast a ballot.

“Until there’s an answer,” Webber said, referring to the pending court ruling, “California counties are going to continue to operate business as usual.”

WHAT TRUMP WANTS THE POSTAL SERVICE TO DO

In March, Trump signed an executive order aiming to give the federal government control over who receives mail ballots. Within days, more than 20 Democratic attorneys general, including California’s Rob Bonta, sued the administration, arguing the Constitution gives only Congress and state governments authority over election administration.

Federal district and appellate courts sided with the Democratic-led states, upholding a preliminary injunction that bars the Postal Service from carrying out any part of the plan while the lawsuit continues.

The core legal questions remain unresolved. Last month, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to keep planning how it would carry out the executive order, prompting Democratic-led states to file a new legal challenge against the Postal Service’s implementation plans.

The Postal Service’s proposal, finalized in August, would create a system to track each voter’s ballot using a unique barcode and cross-reference it against a database of eligible registered voters.

While some states worry they may need to reprint ballot envelopes to comply, Webber said the vast majority of California counties already use envelopes that meet the requirements.

The federal government does not currently maintain a comprehensive list of all eligible registered voters and would need states to submit voter information to a federal mail ballot portal that has not yet been built.

It appears unlikely that portal will be ready in time for the 2026 midterms. According to the office of U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Postal Service employee who filed a whistleblower complaint said the rollout has been rushed, risky and disorganized because of an unrealistic timeline.

“In an attempt to meet impossible deadlines, the United States Postal Service has eliminated standard and necessary testing, creating a substantial risk of a ‘catastrophic failure’ of the system that could ‘derail the midterm elections,'” Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, wrote in a late-August letter to Postmaster General David Steiner.

In June, the postmaster general told a congressional committee that the Postal Service would withhold mail ballots in states that refuse to share basic voter information, including names, addresses and each ballot’s unique barcode.

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, the state’s top elections official, has not said whether California would comply with the proposed voter information requirement.

“California election officials will continue to do everything in their power to ensure that every eligible California voter has the right to cast their ballot by mail and that vote is counted,” her office said.

Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Weber and five other Democratic secretaries of state for refusing to turn over unredacted voter files containing far more sensitive personal information than what the Postal Service rule requires. A federal judge in Southern California dismissed that case in January.

UNCERTAINTY COULD DRIVE MORE VOTERS TO CAST BALLOTS EARLY

In an unexpected twist, concerns about postal reliability may end up accomplishing something election officials and voting advocates have long struggled to achieve: getting more Californians to vote early.

That marks a shift from the run-up to June’s primary, when nervous Democrats urged voters to hold off casting ballots for governor until the last possible moment. Now, social media feeds are filled with posts urging people to vote early and use official drop boxes rather than rely on the mail.

“This whole thing could backfire,” said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation. “What you’re seeing now on social media, in response to this legal drama and confusion, is a lot of people encouraging their friends to vote early — and that’s exactly the message we’ve been pushing all along.”

Early voting helps county election workers tabulate results faster on election night, allowing news organizations such as the Associated Press to call races sooner. Because mailed ballots take the longest to process, returning them several days ahead of the deadline gives election workers more time to remove ballots from envelopes and prepare them for counting before Election Day itself.

“Fortunately, we give voters a lot of options here, and that’s really going to benefit California,” Alexander said. “Other states don’t have as strong a system offering as many alternatives and pathways for voters to exercise their right to vote.”

Original source: CalMatters

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Christian Jeremyah James, 31, and Armand Caleb Legardy, 32, each pleaded guilty in separate hearings to one count of use of unauthorized access devices, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement on Monday.

James, of South Los Angeles, worked in the Culver City Main Post Office, while Legardy, of Inglewood, worked in the La Tijera Post Office in South Los Angeles.

Prosecutors said the pair obtained debit cards that the California Employment Development Department (EDD) had issued to other people for unemployment insurance benefits. The cards were obtained by other unidentified individuals using stolen identities and false information, prosecutors said.

As part of a plea agreement, James and Legardy admitted they used debit cards the EDD had issued to other people in order to purchase or cash money orders from the USPS and to withdraw thousands of dollars in cash from bank ATMs between August last year and February, prosecutors said.

They also admitted that they deposited multiple fraudulently purchased postal money orders directly into their own bank accounts.

James deposited more than $27,000 worth of postal money orders into his bank account between September 3 and 19 last year, while Legardy deposited more than $10,000 in postal money orders that had been illegally purchased with EDD-issued cards in other people’s names, prosecutors said.

They said James admitted to knowingly using at least eight EDD-issued debit cards in other people’s names and causing a loss of around $142,652. Legardy admitted to illegally using nine EDD cards and causing a loss of around $160,879.

United States District Judge George H. Wu has scheduled a sentencing hearing on September 30 for Legardy, and on October 7 for James.

Each defendant could face a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison then, prosecutors said. The USPS and the EDD have been contacted for comment.

California officials have discovered billions of dollars in fraud in the state’s unemployment system over the past year. An investigation also discovered that millions of dollars worth of fraudulent claims were paid out to prisoners, including inmates on death row.

An audit of the EDD earlier this year found the state was hit with over 1,000 suspicious claims per day at the start of the pandemic and blamed California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration for “significant missteps and inaction.”

Khaleda Rahman | Newsweek

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Even Joe Biden had the mental capacity to weigh in on the subject:

“I wonder if you’re outside trying to hold down your mailboxes. They’re going around literally with tractor trailers picking up mailboxes. You oughta go online and check out what they’re doing in Oregon. I mean, it’s bizarre!”

He may have been reading from a script, but Joe Biden said all of those words in order and we should be happy for that.

Nonetheless, Breitbart said it best: “Democrats have spent several days flogging the false “mailbox conspiracy” theory that President Donald Trump is deliberately crippling the U.S. Postal Service so that it cannot handle votes by mail in November — even forcing it to remove mailboxes.”

The Fact of the matter is that the US Post Office does regular maintenance on every facet of it’s infrastructure – yes, that includes mailboxes. We feel embarassed that we should also mention that the blue mailboxes seen around the country (all 142,000 of them) are made of steel and painted blue. When left out in the elements for decades at a time, eventually, they begin to rust and must be replaced.

One of the two pictures that went viral over the weekend showed a locking cover over the openings of a bank of mailboxes (above) with the caption “A disgrace and immediate threat to American democracy. Shame on them. Shame on the GOP.” These locks are common in high-crime areas to reduce theft.

With the shipping industry booming the way it has for the last decade, the USPS is slowly downsizing and becoming obsolete. The agency will also be removing hundred of mail-sorting machines – some to be scrapped, others to be sent for routine maintenance. This will not affect mail-in voting as the US Post Office has already explained in detail that it will not be able to handle the volume of “universal mail-in ballots”.

To add some truth to the wild leftist claims, Breitbart’s Joel Pollak writes, “The U.S. Postal Service has been a problem for years, constantly losing money. In 2009, the postmaster general proposed moving to five-day-per-week mail delivery to cut costs. President Barack Obama criticized the service that year for failing to keep up with private sector competitors. The Obama-Biden administration considered closing nearly 3,700 post office locations, and proposed cutting 12,000 postal jobs. President Trump tried a different tack, demanding in 2018 that Amazon lower the prices it charged the U.S. Postal Service for delivering its packages to consumers. One aspect of ongoing cost management is the removal of mailbox from areas where few people deposit mail.”

Considering that mail-in voting is supposed to be the 2nd option alternative to in-person voting, democrats and now celebrity virtue-signalers seems suspiciously concerned about the allocation of USPS resources.

Keep in mind that dozens of cases of confirmed mail-in voter fraud have been found throughout the United States in a number of different elections – resulting in hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes. We’ve seen it time and time again where democrats accuse republicans of the very thing they themselves are guilty of.

Finally, The Daily Caller was able to touch base with representatives from the USPS, indicating, “a USPS spokesperson said last week that collections boxes were being removed due to declining mail volume, thanks in part to the coronavirus pandemic. The postal service said on Friday that it would stop collecting the boxes in 16 Western states because of the allegations that the removals were related to mail-in voting. The USPS inspector general noted in a blog post on Sept. 21, 2016, during the Obama-Biden administration, that 12,000 underused mailboxes had been removed over the previous five years.”

As part of its efforts to keep its collection infrastructure proportionate to customers’ needs at a reasonable cost, the Postal Service has eliminated underused collection boxes that on average receive fewer than 25 pieces a day; it has also added collection boxes where they are convenient for customers,” the blog post said.

-Ben Jinno

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