The CDC "quietly altered its guidance about mail-in voting to make misleading claims..."

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text: Jake Tapper
@jaketapper
NYT: pushed to comply with Trump’s false attacks on mail-in voting, the ⁦@CDCgov “quietly altered its guidance about mail-in voting to make misleading claims about the safety of absentee ballots.”

Early voting in Ann Arbor, Mich., on September 24.
Takeaways on Trump, Voter Fraud and the Election
A New York Times Magazine investigation finds that misleading and false claims about widespread voter fraud are part of a long disinformation effort that the president has taken to new extremes.
nytimes.com

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/30/us/politics/voter-fraud-disinformation.html

The specter of widespread voter fraud has been a cornerstone of President Trump’s efforts to dispute the Nov. 3 election should he lose. A New York Times Magazine investigation published on Wednesday has found that the idea, based on a flimsy set of sensationalist, misleading or outright false claims, was intentionally planted in the public discourse as part of a decades-long disinformation campaign by the Republican Party and outside actors.

Though the goals of the campaign complement and build on long-running disenfranchisement efforts aimed at Black and Latino voters, the investigation shows that the Trump administration has used the full force of the federal government, from the Department of Homeland Security to the Postal Service, to prop up limp claims of fraud as no White House has ever before.

The strategy was hatched soon after Mr. Trump won the 2016 election and has included the involvement of top officials, including the president and Vice President Mike Pence.

Despite the attention paid to it by administration officials and right-wing media, voter fraud is a largely nonexistent problem. Law enforcement investigations have repeatedly failed to find major wrongdoing in cases hyped for political gain, often based on sloppy data analysis.

*snip*

[underpants]

1. WTH does the CDC have to do with mail-in ballots?

Oh. I see.

[Mike 03]

2. This is enraging:

The changes, which have not been previously reported, addressed mail ballots only in a brief section about possible dangers associated with them, suggesting that workers allow mail to sit for a few hours before handling it “to further reduce risk” and to carefully disinfect all machinery that comes into contact with it. Its final point: “Mail-in voting can make it more difficult for voters with disabilities to exercise their right to vote.” This was misleading. Mail voting is the primary means of voting for many people with disabilities.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

6. It is totally unnecessary to have mail sit for a few hours.

There is zero risk of infection from a piece of mail, unless perhaps a Covid-19 infected person spit on it and then handed it directly to someone.

And disinfecting machinery the mail comes in contact with? Again, not needed and a waste of time and disinfectant stuff. A couple of months ago I saw a brief article about how disinfection chemicals were already beginning to play havoc with the environment, and it's probably a whole lot worse by now.

I'm being driven bat-shit crazy by my local library's insistence on not checking in returned books for three days. Again, totally unnecessary.

[Arazi]

3. 1st thing Biden needs to do is fire Redfield. He's complicit

[LisaL]

4. How ridiculous to emphasize the supposed dangers of mail in voting rather than in person voting.

While in person, people are actually in close enough contact to one another and the main way virus transmits is from one person to another via air.

[enough]

5. Total capitulation. NT