Bill Maher's "Don't Mail Your Unnecessary Shit Til After 11/3" Campaign

[stopbush]

Bill Maher had a decent suggestion last night: beginning September 1 thru the election and a bit beyond, let’s unclog the USPS so they can deal with processing the timely delivery of mail-in ballots.

Bill suggests we forego clogging the USPS with the usual bday cards, post cards etc, even limiting the shit we all order through amazon, that businesses take a month off from sending their usual straight-to-the-trash fliers, etc, the idea being that less mail in the system means easier to process ballots. Your aunt’s bday? Call her on the phone - better than a card anyway.

Of course, one can’t stop the political fliers which will be clogging the system.

Seems to me like a reasonable and doable idea. What say you?

[SWBTATTReg]

1. Another good idea. Less mail means hopefully more attention will be paid to the mail that's in

the system, e.g., ballots.

However, I'm going to go w/ my first choice, vote in person, w/ a mask, and no fear.

[stopbush]

2. My belief is that the Rs have so rigged in-person voting

via voter suppression tactics that they are trying to dissuade people from using mail-in because they don’t control that. They WANT us to go to the polls. That’s where they've spent their time and $. Every person they can drive to the long lines at the polls means fewer ballots cast the day of.

[sarcasmo]

6. Every NBA arena as a polling location was a genius idea, Thanks Lebron James.

[customerserviceguy]

20. And it is a good idea

But you've got to get poll workers to show up, and in previous elections those have been disproportionally older folks who are probably reluctant to expose themselves to the general public for hours on end. I don't think places will be what's lacking, it will be people.

[SWBTATTReg]

12. I don't have long lines, thus I don't worry about. Never did, probably never will. Will vote in

confidence and safety.

[Stallion]

3. I'm In

but I'm Voting early in person

[Baitball Blogger]

4. Oh, really? And where were you fuckers when I suggested this

TWENTY DAYS AGO

Mutha f*****s

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213875698

[LisaL]

5. I am not limiting items I order through amazon.

Amazon uses many delivery services, not just usps. Most of my items get delivered through amazon own delivery service.

[marlakay]

8. Most of mine comes from UPS

I just ordered meds and they came fast usps, i found myself wondering was this because i live in a conservative town? Did they only take away mail sorter from dem places?

[BlueJac]

7. Vote early in person!

[CTyankee]

9. all my clothes are catalog shopped. I'll stop now until after voting day. I hadn't thought of the

consequences. I can't shop in stores as I am elderly and shouldn't be in such close quarters with other shoppers. I find it difficult to find stuff that fits right so a lot I ship back. Will use UPS.

[LisaL]

17. I think you can safely get your clothes.

Most states aren't going to mail ballots any time soon.
I would say that going easy on the mail will only make sense much more close to the election day.

[customerserviceguy]

21. There will be multiple pieces of mail

for some absentee ballots. First, an application to get one has to be requested, if that's done by mail, that's one letter. Then when the application goes in, there's another, then mailing out the ballot, and mailing it back in.

Four pieces of mail for one vote. We need online voting as at least an alternative.

[CTyankee]

25. We've done the application, put them in dropbox at city hall.

will do same when we get the ballot.

[mentalsolstice]

30. I shop by catalog shop as well, however....

I haven’t ordered any clothing since late last fall. Where in the hell am I going to wear new clothing to? I guess things are different in CT and you can get out and about. Here in NWFL, our lives are basically limited to the grocery, getting takeout, and the hair salon. So no need to buy new clothing. I haven’t worn anything but gym shorts/pants and t-shirts since late February.

I have noticed that my clothing catalogs are getting much thinner. In the long term a lot of clothing retailers whether they are bricks and mortar or catalog/online are going to suffer or go out of business. We have nowhere to go in new duds.

[CTyankee]

31. Nothing too different than what I'm doing here in CT. I am forgetting which day of the week it is

because of the sameness of everything. We were really looking forward to the Ivy League football season as we always do here in New Haven. We have a tailgate group which is kinda large and have some great friends we only see there. Games are at the historic, and really beautiful, Yale Bowl. They're fun and we really enjoy them. Now THAT's gone for this season!

So I think to myself "well, boo hoo. If that's our biggest problem then we're being just silly."

It helps that I am involved in writing a book. I have amassed a great deal of background materials from the Internet to study and my writing chugs along. Hope to publish next summer!

[mentalsolstice]

32. My pill pack is the way I keep up with the day of the week 😐

Good luck with your book. Hopefully after Labor Day we’ll be able to get out more, even if it’s just to the beach, 1 mile away, but couldn’t access because of crazy tourists. Otherwise, we’re having new flooring put down throughout our house, and it’s going to be several miserable weeks. First world problems, eh?

[CTyankee]

33. What we used to call "white girl problem." Being inconvenienced for a week at home might seem

"first world" problem if one could get out and about as usual. Now that's a thing of the past, like our precious Yale Bowl.

I choose the world of art history because it does have the benefit of perspective, the long view. Something to believe in. Something that will outlast us all. Odd comfort, but there it is!

[mentalsolstice]

34. I look forward to your project/book

I started out as an art major in college, but my parents convinced me to give it up as a matter of practically. I regret listening to them. Even if I didn’t have talent myself, I would’ve loved to study art history....to teach or to work in a museum. At 59, I still try to study and learn.

[CTyankee]

35. Well, do it anyway, or at least whatever you can.

You can be your own teacher. Focus in on a particular work of art you love and branch out from there. Or an era of art. Or art that is one style you are fascinated by. The Internet is your friend and what you can find will amaze you.

I was fortunate and able to do some travel, to the places the art took me. But the internet was most of my "travel." I retired practically as soon as I could advantageously (Social Security benefits) so that helped.

Good luck to you!

[Make7]

10. That doesn't make much sense.

https://twitter.com/USPS/statuses/1296812809964199937

The USPS needs funding, wouldn't people discontinuing the use of their services exacerbate that issue? Would less mail volume be used as a data point for further reductions of manpower and infrastructure?

[TheBlackAdder]

14. This would be registered voters who vote by mail--I'd suspect that would be well under 100M ballots.

.

I posted something a little further down which just starts to touch on things wrong with this idea.

.

[Make7]

23. For 2019 average First-Class Mail volume was 150 million per day. It was over 350 million...

... per day the week of December 16th due to the holiday demand.

In the 2016 Presidential election, 137 million ballots were cast total.

So, high demand capacity of USPS minus average daily demand equals the ability to handle an additional 200 million pieces of First-Class mail per day – or 46% more per day than all ballots cast for President in 2016.

It's not like reducing the mail volume would prevent deliberately misplaced or delayed mail-in ballots – all this boycott (?) would accomplish is reducing revenue for the USPS and perhaps providing further evidence that fewer workers and equipment are needed to handle the quantity of mail being processed.

Bill Maher seems to have missed the mark on this one – this plan seems counterproductive. I'm surprised people seem to be on board with it.

[TheBlackAdder]

27. 2016 - 137 Million Ballots cast, but what percentage was via mail, versus in-person voting?

[Make7]

28. I don't know, I'm saying the USPS can handle it even if EVERYONE voted by mail.

Edit to add: many of the current problems the USPS has are due to COVID-19. They deserve to get a bailout appropriate for the costs incurred related to that just as much as the businesses that received stimulus funds.

[customerserviceguy]

22. My question to them is

then how do we keep hearing stories about bags of ballots turning up after an election? Maybe they're not as efficient as they think they are.

[DFW]

11. And the Democrats need to stop sending millions of these "surveys"

They are really nothing other than appeals for money disguised as "we want your opinion" surveys. I don't know how much straight-to-trash mail I get sent from the States, but it's several pounds a week. My office in Dallas collects any and all mail sent to my home address there or my office, and Fedexes it all to me here each week. Half of it is so hokey, I have to think it is money-grubbing by Republicans trying to play on our sentiments and bilk us out of money by doing so.

[TheBlackAdder]

13. A Bullshit idea! The USPS processes 180M 1st Class pieces a day. It can handle 120M over 2 month.

.

That's around 1/2 of 1% of daily USPS volume if spread out evenly.

The primary goal is to keep money going into the USPS until it can be saved.

People are buying stamps and mailing fliers. It's even worse that Maher is suggesting stopping this NOW, when there are two months to get the vote in. I could see a freeze 2 weeks before election day, but not now, when the USPS needs us the most. Additionally, printers, paper suppliers, graphic artists, ad sales people and mail services will go out of business too or lay off a lot of workers in a period where we don't need that. Those local restaurants use them to get people to their door, when it is most critical for them to get business. I could go on and on.

While it sounds like a great cosmic Bill Maher vapor, it's really a Libertarian brain fart.

.

[LisaL]

15. My feelings exactly.

My state won't even start sending ballots out until Oct 6th. What good is it going to do if all of the sudden I stop mailing things?
And why does he want people to stop ordering from Amazon? Like I said, Amazon using a bunch of delivery services.
Most of things I order come with Amazon's own delivery.
What good is it going to do for USPS to stop ordering? Also, seems like USPS likes packages because they are making money off it.
USPS is not going to be happy with the idea that people should stop mailing things.

[Raine]

18. Agree, I'm ordering what I need and what I want when I want to. nt

[spanone]

16. it's a goddamn shame our executive branch is working it's ass off to throw this election.

[customerserviceguy]

19. Maybe

we ought to ask companies to stop mailing us unrequested catalogs, too. My lady gets one or two a week from a place she last ordered from well over three years ago, and they don't seem to get the message, even though she's gone online to tell them to stop.

However, the USPS will no doubt be flooded with political mail pieces. Maybe there's a way that Democratic candidates can set up a "Don't bother mailing anything to me" list. Even if GOP voters registered for such a list, it would prevent those candidates from wasting money on people who will never vote for them.

There are probably enough other creative ideas out there, but who's going to take them seriously among the people who really send out a lot of bulk crap?

[weaponeer]

24. Sounds like a good idea

I could also stand to receive much less junk mail.

[ecstatic]

26. Lol. Good idea

I suppose I can go 100% paperless as far as statements are concerned, though I like to have a written record in case I need it later.

[PatSeg]

29. But please keep buying stamps!