We should all vote by calling in sick that day and shutting down the country to show our discontent

Unfortunately, this also gives an assist to the conservative plot to get rid of the post office. The fact that tiny-d donnie's plot to also steal an election in the process is a two-fer - reduce trust in an institution like the USPS while installing conservatives into offices that they don't deserve.

But in the short term, I understand why they'd reach for this.

I would hope that every state, including mine, would find a way to allow voters to print their ballot out, fill it out at their own damn leisure, and drop it off at a drop box, also at their leisure.

This will give the cons less of a chokepoint in the future too. The net was supposedly designed to treat censorship as damage and route around it.

I wonder what solution math prodigy Ted Kaczynski would have had for this.

I thought the issue was in processing them when they're sent BACK IN, rather than when they were being delivered. If memory serves, the issue was that when processing a group of ballots sent in, if a single envelope had an unreadable signature or something similar they could remove the entire bundle.

How would FedEx or UPS delivering the fresh untouched ballots address this?

So Trump is suddenly a brunette now?

Kinda sucks that the USPS is diminished either way. Even if we nip this creeping fascism in the bud, the price is forcing states to use these private couriers for ballots, further eroding the Postal Service's reason for existing.

The USPS operates under a Universal Service Obligation to provide mail service to every addressing the US, no matter how remote, and regardless of whether the delivery is part of a profitable route. The irony is that if Republicans suceed in abolishing or privatizing it, Republican voters in rural areas will find themselves paying the true cost of delivery to their locations. Yet again, Republicans vote for politicians who actively work to undermine those voter's interests.

If you think for profit companies are honest and aren't going to sabotage their customers at the demands of their government's pressure (NSLs), I have a bridge to sell you

... wait. How does THAT improve things?

Clearly you mean "New America"