HDWill

I suppose so. Are the people working at the early voting sites all full-time county employees? Many of the people who normally work the polls on election day are in their late 60s and 70s, at higher risk for COVID. So maybe staffing is one reason to reduce the number of early-voting locations this year.

civilservant

I can only speak for my 'neck of the woods' but yes, there are full time county staff at the early voting election, since it is the election office. Early voting is being held in a smaller location than election day will be held at here.

Lion in Winter

Early voting has been promoted this year as a way to avoid covid transmission by reducing the number of people crowded in on Election Day. It kind of defeats the point if you can't manage to put on enough staff to prevent crowding on the early voting days. It isn't as though it was a surprise. Some people may well be put off, since many aren't able to get the amount of time off work needed to queue for hours. Yesterday was a Fed holiday so more people were able to go and vote - one can hope the queues were partially a function of that.

Lion in Winter

Cook County in IL is still recruiting for election judges from the community. And they are paid for the day, too. Covid has def put people off sitting in the polling places for a long day.

Nutmegger

There are more problems: Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is emerging from obscurity and into a glaring hot spotlight lately, raising alarms with aggressive new strategies that have upended the United States Postal Service just as it heads into possibly the most consequential moment of its history -- the great vote-by-mail election of 2020. DeJoy's administration has slowed delivery, removed high-speed letter sorters from commission and issued a stark warning to election officials that mail-in ballots will no longer automatically be moved as priority mail. On top of that, the USPS has started reducing post office operating hours across several states, cut overtime for postal workers and removed some of their iconic blue letter collection boxes.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/16/politics/dejoy-post-office-hot-seat-election-2020/index.html

HDWill

The USPS will get the job done. (Though not necessarily if you mail in your ballot only one day before election day-- for voters, Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance). They have huge automated systems that have been carefully worked out for years/decades. The much greater potential problem is the county elections offices, who are just a few people in a room. I've worked as a volunteer poll worker before and have known some county elections officials. Some of them aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer.

scrubbedexpat099

I have a parcel coming that arrived in Denver yesterday, now seems it is in Cody, Wyoming. About 1 in 3 USPS go on a mystery trip. Not had an issue with UPS and one delay of consequence with FedEx.

HDWill

Parcels are handled quite differently compared to letter mail. Letter mail is generally less error prone (it is scanned and sorted all by machine with very low error rates). And mailed in ballots aren't going across the country in most cases.

I requested my absentee ballot a couple weeks ago and mailed in my ballot one week ago. I voted for all the Democrats. But I think there has been way too much catastrophizing on the left about the postal service. Will someone pull your ballot out the mail stream and throw it in the trash? No. Will mail be piled up in warehouses for a week without being delivered? No. Could some mail be slower by one day than it is normally? Potentially yes.

scrubbedexpat099

All the Parcels have printed labels. I do not relay on mail for bills etc, those that do have had no end of issues.

HDWill

I think there is still more room for human error with parcels. Yesterday Fedex delivered a package to my door that was supposed to go to a place down the street. I could Google it to get more precise data, but I think the misrouting/delay rate for the major package services is around 2-5%. I think the misroute rate for USPS letter mail is under 1%.

Giantaxe

The issue is not just the USPS, but the likelihood that after election day we will see a barrage of lawsuits from Trump to try and stop or limit counting of postal ballots. By hand delivering a ballot now or voting now, you are maximising the chance that you will not be subject to this nonsense. I'll be hand carrying my completed ballot to City Hall here in San Francisco, In fact, we'll make a morning of it - walk down there, drop off our ballots, enjoy a lunch out and walk home. And celebrate democracy with a glass of wine...

scrubbedexpat099

This is not an essential delivery and it is quite fascinating watching it bounce around, probably will get it Saturday instead of today.

HDWill

What technicalities does hand delivering a ballot prevent? Does your ballot envelope require a signature, or witness etc? It's true that mailed in ballots received after election day could be contested if there's no visible postmark, but that is easily solved by mailing your ballot at least three business days before election day.

scrubbedexpat091

Suppose it depends on state, ever seen a California ballot......

This year in my California county isn't too bad, only 22 things or offices to vote on.

US President
House of Representative
Member of State Assembly
Judge of the superior court
County board of education
A community college board of education seat
elementary school district board member x 2
County board of supervistor seat
Props 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25


Took me about 20 minutes to complete referencing my notes I took during my 2 hours of researching everyone and all the props.

caretaker

Did they get all the phony ballot drop boxes in California picked up, and are there any charges coming from that?