Residents and businesses nationwide have been reporting slowdowns in mail and package delivery by the U.S. Postal Service, raising concerns that mail-in ballots could be affected in the upcoming election.

In Virginia, hundreds of veterans had their colon cancer screening tests invalidated after the results took months to arrive by mail. An Atlanta college student missed an academic trip to Ghana when their passport with two-day shipping took a month to show up. A bride in Texas had to rent a dress for her wedding after hers spent weeks stuck in a Houston postal facility.

Across the country, residents and businesses have been reporting widespread slowdowns in mail and package delivery by the U.S. Postal Service. The delays have become so persistent that members of Congress have gotten involved, urging the Postal Service to drastically correct course and raising concern about what impact the disruptions could have on mail-in ballots in the upcoming election.

The delays appear to largely stem from a new system the Postal Service began rolling out last fall that will eventually funnel all the nation’s letters and packages through a consolidated network of 60 regional distribution centers — similar to the airlines’ hub-and-spoke model. The change is part of a wider $40 billion, 10-year overhaul of the network that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has said will reduce costs, improve reliability and make the Postal Service more competitive. But in some instances, the plan has done the opposite, according to the Office of the Inspector General for the Postal Service, members of Congress and Postal Service advocacy groups.

  • SeaJ
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    2 months ago

    Biden has had the capacity to replace him for at least a year now.

    • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Between Garland and DeJoy, I hope we are paying attention to what neo-liberals think progress looks like. We need to be aggressively supporting young progressives in the Democratic party as much as possible.

      • tacosplease@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Will that pull in enough swing voters though? I’d love Liz or Bernie to be running the show, but I don’t trust America’s shitty electorate to sufficiently turn out for someone like that.

        From my perspective, Biden ran as a somewhat conservative Democrat and then proceeded to pass some fairly progressive stuff despite the current political environment.

        IMO we’re doing about as well as we can do considering the broad range of political ideologies that all have to fit under the “not a conservative” umbrella before there are enough voters to outnumber conservatives + the electoral collage.

    • tacosplease@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Not trying to say this isn’t true, but do you have a source for this info?

      I know they needed to appoint new board members because that’s who votes for DeJoy’s position. They were able to replace a couple conservatives but one of the board members we thought was a progressive started blocking attempts to remove DeJoy.

      At least that’s how I remember it. That was several months ago if not longer though. Would love for someone to correct whatever I got wrong and update us with anything that may have happened since then.

      • SeaJ
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        2 months ago

        The last person he nominated was a Republican back in May 2022. He was not required to nominate a Republican. The board can only have a maximum of five governors from the same party. Currently there are three Democrats, three Republicans, and one independent and also two vacant spots. So there could easily be two more Democrats. If the last person he nominated was a Democrat, that would mean four Democrats, two Republicans, and one independent which means it would not matter if that independent person always sided with Republicans.

        So he essentially had the power to get DeJoy removed for nearly the last two years.

        The source for the info is Wikipedia which lists the when the terms began for each governor.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_of_Governors_of_the_United_States_Postal_Service