Saturday, November 07, 2020
Friday, November 06, 2020
Thursday, November 05, 2020
USPS processed 150,000 ballots after Election Day, jeopardizing thousands of votes
Nov. 5, 2020 at 3:18 pm Updated Nov. 5, 2020 at 3:28 pm
By
Christopher Ingraham and
Jacob Bogage
The Washington Post
More than 150,000 ballots were caught in U.S. Postal Service processing facilities and not delivered by Election Day, agency data shows, including more than 12,000 in five of the states that have yet to be called for either President Donald Trump or his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden.
Despite assurances from Postal Service leaders that agency officials were conducting daily sweeps for misplaced ballots, the mail service acknowledged in a court filing Thursday that thousands of ballots had not been processed in time, and that more ballots were processed Wednesday than on Election Day.
The number of mailed ballots the Postal Service did not deliver by Election Day is expected to grow as more data is released in the coming days. Some election experts worry such delays could run up against even more-generous ballot acceptance windows that some states have granted.
In several swing states, late ballots will still be counted as long as they were postmarked by Election Day and received by Friday, according to state law. They include Nevada, where 4,518 ballots arrived after Election Day, as well as North Carolina (2,958) and Pennsylvania, (3,439). But in other states — such as Arizona, where 864 ballots were delayed, and Georgia, where 853 were delayed — votes that did not reach election officials by Nov. 3 will be disqualified
Because the counts are not done in those states, it is unclear whether undelivered ballots would have made a difference in deciding the presidential election. But the delivery failures highlight the risks in relying on the mail service to deliver ballots close to Election Day.
The Postal Service had warned voters not to mail ballots within one week of the election. The Biden campaign changed its messaging to encourage voters to use drop boxes or vote in person and avoid mailing their ballots within 10 days of the election. The Trump campaign’s messaging on the topic was mixed: The president baselessly claimed mail-in voting was susceptible to fraud, though he voted by mail himself in Florida, and the campaign later courted supporters to vote by mail after seeing growing Democratic advantages.
Under Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major Trump financier who took over the agency in June, first-class mail delivery rates have declined steadily, especially in urban areas that are bastions of Democratic voters. DeJoy said in public statements that facilitating an election in which a record 198 million Americans were eligible to vote by mail was his “sacred duty” and that the agency was up to the task. But the Postal Service’s summer struggles bled into election season almost immediately as Americans began voting in October.
On Wednesday, the Postal Service processed 94.5% of ballots on time, an improvement over recent days, but below the 97% rate that postal and voting experts expect. Based on the agency’s one- to three-day ballot-processing window, voters would have mailed those ballots on Sunday or Monday.
For the remaining 5.5%, or more than 8,000, of the ballots that took longer to process, they would have been mailed between Thursday and Saturday.
In the nine postal districts spanning five states — Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia — that have yet to decide the presidential race, the on-time rate was 84.6%. That means roughly 15 out of every 100 ballots in processing plants were not sorted — or delivered — in time.
A Postal Service representative did not immediately respond Thursday to a request for comment.
On Election Day, postal workers were instructed to submit ballots more directly to vote counters, bypassing the processing plants reflected in the data submitted Thursday to Judge Emmet Sullivan in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Sullivan is overseeing one of several voting rights lawsuits filed in the aftermath of the Postal Service’s well-documented service declines. But the delivery numbers alarmed civil rights advocates, who say that the Postal Service was a vital and unavoidable component of election infrastructure for millions of Americans in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Voters put their ballots in the mail by this week and by this past weekend, and the only reason that their vote wasn’t counted was because of USPS delays,” Shankar Duraiswamy, an attorney representing civil rights group Vote Forward, said in court.
Justice Department lawyers representing the Postal Service have cautioned that the figures are not reliable. The data does not include “first mile” and “last mile” handling steps, which could add time to delivery, and accounts only for items the agency was able to successfully identify as ballots. The Postal Service also encouraged post offices to cull local ballots by hand and deliver them directly to vote counters, bypassing the regional facilities that account for processing scores. The agency cannot say how widely that practice is being employed.
The Postal Service reported to Congress on Thursday that it had processed 135 million ballots since Sept. 4, including blank ballots from election officials to voters, and completed ballots being returned to vote counters.
More than half of the late ballots processed Wednesday were in California, with 25,000 in San Diego alone. Another 16,000 were in the Bay-Valley postal district just south of San Francisco and 25,000 more were in the Sacramento and Los Angeles districts. Those ballots can arrive up to three days after the election and still be counted, according to state law.
As of Thursday afternoon, Biden was leading Trump in Nevada by about 11,000 votes, with an additional 11% of ballots remaining to be counted. If that lead narrows considerably the 4,000 late ballots may become a factor in that contest.
In North Carolina, Trump was leading Biden by more than 70,000 votes with an estimated 95 %of the vote in. In Pennsylvania, Trump was up by more than 100,000 with a lead most analysts expect to disappear, eventually handing the state to Biden. If those margins become close, the late mail ballots may come into play.
In Arizona, Biden’s current 70,000-vote lead is not likely to be affected by the roughly 400 late ballots found there. Similarly, the 800 ballots in Georgia could come into play only if Trump’s current lead of more than 10,000 votes in the state narrows considerably.
The Postal Service is under overlapping court orders to devote “extraordinary measures” to move election mail. Those steps started on Oct. 20, and some are set to continue until the end of November. The agency authorized local post offices to create ballot-only drop-off lines and drive-through ballot submission lanes.
Judges in Pennsylvania, New York, Washington state and the District of Columbia also ordered DeJoy to halt a controversial cost-cutting agenda that eliminated late and extra mail dispatch and delivery trips and sought to cut 64 million work hours, the equivalent of three weeks’ worth for its staff of 630,000.
The agency also removed more than 700 high-speed mail sorting machines, close to 15% of its inventory, over the summer, a decision that cut the Postal Service’s processing capacity by 21.4 million pieces of paper mail per hour. The agency routinely moves 450 million mail items a day.
Almost immediately, postal performance suffered. In the first five weeks after DeJoy’s policies took effect, more than 7% of the nation’s first-class mail was delayed.
Managers had cut back on overtime hours while the coronavirus pandemic flattened the postal workforce. Mail backlogs were recorded nationwide; it took some facilities close to a month to ameliorate the backlogs, according to union officials. Meanwhile, package volumes surged as a homebound nation patronized online shopping to avoid crowded stores.
The cumbersome boxes are more difficult to sort than paper mail, and stressed the Postal Service’s already understaffed operations. Packages frequently come with a guaranteed delivery window, leading supervisors to sometimes prioritize their delivery instead of daily mail, according to mail carriers. It led to a rise in document falsification on package delivery, a problem that’s plagued the mail service for years, according to Inspector General reports.
Postal Service spokesman David Partenheimer said the agency started sweeping its processing facilities for election mail, including voter registration information, ballots and ballot applications, in January. It began publicly disclosing the daily “all clear” sweeps — sometimes completed by inspector general officials or agents from the U.S. Postal Inspection service, the agency’s law enforcement arm — in the last week of September in response to a federal court order in New York. But those reports did not describe what postal workers found during the checks, only that the checks were completed, not completed or failed.
In 10% of the reports, the Postal Service either found ballots that should have been processed, failed to complete the check or did not report the results.
The agency has published the results of only one ballot sweep in the entire election cycle. It reported to Sullivan on Wednesday that it found 815 ballots in Texas processing plants.
This story was originally published at washingtonpost.com. Read it here.
Two states to require masks in public at all times, regardless of distance from others
BY JESSIE HELLMANN - 11/05/20 04:27 PM EST
Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) and Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) issued a stricter mask mandates this week as coronavirus cases continue to surge across the nation.
Mills issued her order on Thursday, requiring Mainers to wear masks in public spaces at all times, regardless of distance from others.
Previously, under the governor’s executive order, people were not required to wear masks in public if they could stay at least six feet away from others.
Under the order, which took effect the same day it was issued, masks are required within indoor spaces “accessible to the public” including restaurants, grocery stores and houses of worship, and in outdoor spaces, like playgrounds, sidewalks and parking lots, regardless of distance from others.
“We have recorded yet another day of record-high case numbers. This deadly and dangerous virus is spreading all across our state,” Mills said in a statement.
“Protect your family. Protect a health care worker. Protect the elderly. Wear your face covering. Save lives. It is that simple,” she said.
Baker issued a similar order earlier this week, requiring people “wear face coverings in all public places, even where they are able to maintain 6 feet of distance from others” and “whether indoors or outdoors.”
Most states or localities that require masks be worn in public with exceptions for instances when people are able to stay distanced outside, where the virus is much less likely to spread.
Cases have been lower in the northeast throughout the summer, but are now increasing with the rest of the country.
Maine is averaging 99 new cases per day, a 227 percent increase from the average two weeks ago, according to The New York Times tracker.
Massachusetts is averaging nearly 1,300 new cases per day, an increase of 76 percent from two weeks ago.
Over the past week, the U.S. has confirmed record-high averages of 92,000 new COVID-19 cases per day.
Experts have warned the U.S. will see a new surge in cases in the fall and winter, as the colder winter forces people to spend more time indoors, where the virus spreads more easily.
Preppers, Students and Financiers: How Brits Are Preparing for Lockdown 2.0
"For me, being a prepper is just an enjoyable hobby that would allow me to survive a doomsday scenario."
By Chris Bethell
04 November 2020, 3:20pm
As the US waits to discover who’ll be occupying a big white house in Washington DC for the next four years, people in England are gearing up to spend at least the next month stuck in their own houses, as the country enters a new national lockdown from Thursday morning.
This lockdown differs slightly from the first – schools and universities will remain open; you can meet one friend outside, as long as you stay socially distanced; public toilets will remain open – but for the most part it’ll be exactly the same.
What might differ is how each individual chooses to experience it. With months of practice under our belts, will people do anything this time around that they didn’t back in March? I spoke to some to find out.
STEVE HART, UK
PHOTO COURTESY OF STEVE HART.
VICE: Steve, you're a prepper. How has that influenced your approach to lockdown?
Steve Hart: I haven't done a lot different to what I normally do. Prepping isn't just hoarding for a rainy day, it's more about skills. If you buy loads of bottles of water, for instance, what happens when they run out? Being able to filter water is much more important. Hunting, trapping and being able to live off the land are the more integral part of prepping. The American preppers take it to mean, “How many guns do I have,” whereas the British are much more like James Bond – a little bit more stylish; we just come in and get the job done. For me, it's just an enjoyable hobby that would allow me to survive a doomsday scenario.
Here's What Hardcore Preppers Think of Your Coronavirus Stockpile
BY ALESSANDRO PILO
What did you make of the panic buying in the first lockdown?
It was a bit silly, really, and people were buying all of the wrong things. The classic one is toilet paper, it's so ridiculous. Talking from a survivalist perspective, what happens when it runs out? Don't buy that! Buy yourself two or three cotton sheets and cut them up so you have little squares, like you would in the old days. Use them all up, boil them and use them again.
What would be your advice to people going into this second lockdown?
What you don't want to do is get yourself a full Sky package. Instead, you should be getting ten pounds of rice, some pasta, some sauce to keep you personally going. It's good to build up a stock as you do your normal weekly shops – picking up extras on buy-one-get-one-free deals, it's easy to build up a month’s stock of food without panic buying. This can be useful for short-term emergencies, like if you’re suddenly made redundant.
ORYANE YUNGU, STUDENT IN BANKING AND INTERNATIONAL FINANCE
PHOTO: CHRIS BETHELL
VICE: Are you worried about lockdown 2.0?
Oryane Yungu: Personally, I'm not too worried, as I really enjoyed the first lockdown. It allowed me to really focus on myself, which was helpful for me and my studying. I also like my flatmates, so I'm not worried about spending time with them. I know some other people have it quite differently, though. It's not always great on the mental health front for them.
What are you doing to prep for the next lockdown?
I'm buying extra clothes so that I don't have to do the washing as often, but then extra laundry detergent and canned foods, freezer goods and cleaning products, so I don't have to go to the store that often.
LIBBY JACKSON, OWNER OF THE FEATHERY FOLK AND EDGE VIEW FLOCK AND FLEECE
PHOTO: CHRIS BETHELL
VICE: What were you doing before the first lockdown?
Libby Jackson: Before lockdown we had a very busy summer ahead of us – I run a falconry company called The Feathery Folk, and normally from Easter time onwards we ramp up all of our events. We do country shows, school fairs, small shows and, until this year, we had a contract doing a medieval festival in Anglesey, among many other things. Summer is usually absolutely crazy and is about 70 percent of my income.
How did the first lockdown affect you?
Our first events usually start in Easter, and as that approached our clients started postponing. When lockdown hit I had two of the most depressing weeks of my life, where literally every single booking up until September cancelled. There was definitely a moment of, ‘What the hell are we going to do now?’ Luckily, I'd started doing a few days over the winter at Glebe Farm, where I fly the birds, and also where I have my paddock, in which I do all of the encounters with them. I bought a flock of sheep simply to mow the grass for me; they eat all of the thistles and weeds so I don't have to put weed killer down.
Students Sent Us Photos of the Meals They’re Being Given in Quarantine
BY IMOGEN WEST-KNIGHTS
The emotions have been so strange. We've had to diversify, but there's only so much I can do with my birds remotely: having an owl flying over little kids while they're all going “woah” can't be replicated online. So I parked this and threw my energies into other things.
What have you done instead to prepare for lockdown 2.0?
It's always been a long-term ambition to own sheep – literally, since I was a teenager. My flock are rare breed Icelandic sheep, and they have a really interesting fleece; it's double layered, so there's a really soft under layer and an outer tog, which is a long fleece. Icelandics are one of the first to be domesticated, about 1,000 years ago by the Vikings. I was really keen that, when I got the sheep, I wanted to do something with their wool, because it would be such a waste otherwise.
I'm not a knitter, but I am practical – I discovered that you can take a fleece straight off the sheep and felt the back, keeping it all together as one piece. So it comes out like a sheepskin, but it's just the fleece, and no harm to the sheep! I began making a few rugs from my own sheep, just to see how they went, but then got some wonderful feedback from the people I showed. Everyone liked them, so we decided to run with that and expand it. It doesn't rely on me being there in person in front of people. I'm hoping Edge View Flock and Fleece will keep us going.
JUSTIN ONUEKWUSI, SET UP AN ONLINE SCHOOL TO HELP BLACK YOUNG PEOPLE
PHOTO COURTESY OF JUSTIN ONUEKWUSI.
What have you been doing to prep for Lockdown 2.0?
Justin Onuekwusi: I'm a big driver and thinker about diversity and inclusion in the finance sector and beyond. Within this area I’ve supported my partners, Gavin Lewis and Andrien Meyers, who’ve led the development of an online after-school programme for children of around 14 years old. We've also developed a virtual mentoring programme for people who have just started out in the industry who are looking to navigate the corporate sphere.
The focus of the school programme is on social mobility, so we're trying to target areas where there is low social mobility and give kids the chance that they wouldn't necessarily have had otherwise. And then the mentoring programme is focusing on people from ethnic minorities who are struggling to get any representation within the investment and savings industry. We get Black role models to mentor people who are starting off in the industry.
We always wanted to run the school programme – the two instigators of that are members of a group I sit in called #talkaboutblack, in which we try to be open about the challenges and solutions to create greater representation in the corporate sphere. We always wanted to run it after school, going out into communities and bringing kids into our offices – kids that would never have had the opportunity beforehand, but then lockdown struck and we had to rethink.
We decided to make this virtual instead, and got over ten different partners to support the programme and to help deliver it online to the students. Making it online has made it very scalable, too – being from Manchester myself, I recognised that one of the problems before was how we could increase the scope beyond London. Going virtual means we can reach out to those communities where getting access would have been much more difficult previously.
5 ways your taxes could change if Biden is elected — and how taxpayers should prepare
OCTOBER 1, 2020 in TAXES
Don’t let the first 2020 presidential debate cloud your vision: Even though former Vice President Joe Biden’s tax policy plans only briefly took the spotlight, they aren’t something you want to gloss over.
The Democratic nominee on Tuesday highlighted plans to restore the top-line tax rate to where it was before the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017. Biden also reportedly wants to raise corporate taxes and levies on long-term capital gains for the country’s highest earners — all of which would likely be necessary to fund trillions of dollars worth of new proposals at a time when the budget deficit has soared to its widest on record, largely in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Those policies would be a substantial change from President Donald Trump’s approach to taxes, although experts say it’s mostly high-income earners who would feel the biggest impact.
Here’s five ways your taxes could change if Biden is elected and how to prepare your finances for the possibility of a different tax environment in the future.
1. Income taxes: High-income earners would see a tax hike
Biden has been vocal about leaving taxes alone for those who make less than $400,000 annually. But high-income earners might have even more wriggle room than that pledge implies, at least when it comes to Biden’s income tax proposals.
The nominee wants to boost the top-line income tax rate to 39.6 percent from 37 percent. According to the Internal Revenue Service’s 2020 tax brackets (which apply for taxes filed in 2021), the top-line rate applies to single filers who earn $518,401 or more and married filers who make $622,051 or higher.
And even though it might feel like a substantial change, it isn’t totally out in left field. The TCJA’s income tax deductions are currently set to expire in December 2025, meaning they would go back to this level if left untouched, regardless of who occupies the White House.
“Democrats have a built-in advantage on the income tax,” says Jeffrey Levine, CPA and director of advanced planning at Buckingham Wealth Partners. “If nothing happens in 2025, most of that goes back to the way it was before. So the way I look at it, even if they win everything, it may not be the first thing they do because there’s at least a backstop for that.”
2. Capital gains tax and estate planning: Changes to long-term gains rates for high-income earners and a ‘loophole’ for inheritances
If you earn more than $1 million a year, the profits you earn on your investments such as stocks or real estate would also be taxed differently under the Biden administration.
What’s called capital gains, those earnings would be taxed as ordinary income, regardless of whether they’re held over the short or long term (two distinctions that are typically used for taxation purposes). For the wealthiest investors, capital gains would be taxed at 43.4 percent instead of 23.8 percent.
Meanwhile, Biden also wants to adjust a provision commonly referred to as a “step-up in basis” that lets investors hold onto an asset, watch it grow and then pass it along to an heir after death, resetting the threshold for gains at the point of transfer.
“This is a way that lots of capital gains escape taxation altogether,” says Gordon Mermin, senior research associate at the joint Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center. “If someone buys an asset, it appreciates quite a bit. They hold onto it, they never sell it until they die, and then when they die, the person who inherits it gets it.”
3. Tax credits: Would-be homebuyers and parents might want to pay attention
While much of Biden’s tax plan seems laser-focused on targeting high-income earners, analysts say the most substantial impact on low- and moderate-income individuals rests within the Democratic nominee’s tax credit policies (along with a separate retirement proposal that has some tax implications).
Biden wants to help first-time homebuyers purchase their first property by providing a $15,000 tax credit. That’s similar to a Great Recession-era policy, which gave individuals a 10 percent break capped at $7,500 during the Bush administration and $8,000 under the Obama-era White House.
The nominee also wants to expand a child care tax credit that families with children up to 13 years in age could use to subsidize half of their child care costs, as long as it doesn’t exceed $8,000 (or $16,000 for two or more children). The Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) currently covers a maximum of $3,000 for families with one child (or $6,000 for households with two or more children). Under Biden’s proposal, families making less than $125,000 annually would be eligible for the full 50 percent credit. After that threshold, a partial credit would be available to individuals whose incomes come in under $400,000.
With a similar proposal in response to the coronavirus pandemic, Biden also wants to increase the Child Tax Credit to $3,600 for children under the age of 6 and to $3,000 per child for those between the ages of 6 and 17.
4. Itemized deductions: Mortgage interest rate deductions, charitable contributions might not provide as much of a break
A more technical aspect of Biden’s tax policy plans, the Democratic nominee wants to institute an overall cap of 28 percent on itemized deductions. While only a marginal 10 percent of all taxpayers take advantage of this, about 50 percent of those in the top income bracket do, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Examples of such deductions include mortgage interest paid, charitable giving and state and local taxes of up to $10,000.
Here’s how that 28 percent cap would work: Individuals in the top-income bracket would see a 28-cent tax deduction for every dollar deducted, rather than today’s 37 cents deduction. Essentially, it “claws back some of the tax savings” that high-income earners in particular are used to getting, Mermin says.
Given that Biden’s plan includes both a higher rate and a cap on itemized deductions, those moves “not only make income tax higher, but the deductions worth less in the future,” Levine says.
5. Payroll taxes and corporate taxes: Though paid by employers and corporations, they might still add to your wallet
Though not impacting consumers directly, Biden’s proposed corporate tax and payroll tax changes might eventually trickle down to everyday Americans’ wallets.
The Biden plan includes boosting corporate taxes from 21 percent to 28 percent. Before the TCJA, that rate was 35 percent, one of the highest rates among industrialized nations, according to Michael Reynolds, CFA, investment strategy officer at Glenmede.
While it won’t impact consumers’ wallets directly, research suggests that employees end up bearing the brunt of that cost in their paychecks in the form of lower wages, though estimates on how much vary. For investors, that tax hike could also end up weighing on your stock portfolio in some capacity.
“There’s often some tough decisions when budgets get compressed, as they do in recessions, and it can be very similar in an environment where tax rates are going higher,” Reynolds says. “If you’re a shareholder, all else equal, this is a headwind to profitability.”
Biden also reportedly wants to adjust the way payroll taxes apply to individuals who make $400,000 and up. Currently, individuals are taxed a 12.4 percent Social Security tax as long as they make $137,700 or less. The change, however, would leave what some tax policy experts call a “donut hole,” given that it excludes a substantial number of upper-income earners. But it’s for a reason, according to Garrett Watson, senior policy analyst at the Tax Foundation.
“That donut hole, that wage gap, rises every year, and it will eventually close, and maybe in 20 to 30 years, that hole will disappear altogether and all wages will be taxed for Social Security,” Watson says. “The challenge in applying it lower is because the campaign has been so laser focused on not raising taxes for those who make [under] $400,000.”
Here’s how taxpayers can prepare for a possible political shift:
1. Avoid knee-jerk reactions or making any changes right now
Households directly in the line of fire of this tax policy might be tempted to consider reviewing their tax plans. Some of these steps could include harvesting capital gains, pushing forward with deductions or accelerating conversions into a Roth 401(k) or IRA. But accountants and portfolio managers caution against making any decisions right now, when the future is far from certain.
That’s because these policies might not be economically viable or a day one priority, given that the economy will still be bouncing back from the coronavirus pandemic. Passing many of these proposals might also require that the Democratic ticket sweep both chambers of Congress. Even so, more moderate-leaning Democrats might be hesitant to push forward with some of these changes, meaning these proposals might look different in their final form.
“Those are all activities that you could easily do in November or early December with no added consequences from today but with a lot more information,” Levine says. “The viability is 110 percent dependent upon the election.”
2. Start talking with a financial adviser, particularly if you are an ultra high-net worth individual
But it’s never too late to start working with a financial adviser, Levine says, particularly if you are a high-net worth individual.
Some of the highest earners might be considering gifting assets out of their name. The valuation process can often take some time, even in normal circumstances. Add an unprecedented coronavirus pandemic and a contested election year, and that process will only take longer. You might no longer have time to kick start that process come November, he says.
3. Keep in mind the economic impact of a higher taxes policy
Policy experts say that boosting taxes will be necessary to fund portions of Biden’s plan, given that lawmakers will be unwilling to run solely off of deficit spending.
Proponents of Biden’s proposals suggest that canceling some portion of student loan debt, making college free for some families and creating a public option for health insurance might boost growth. But it’s still going to come with cost.
Watson’s team at the Tax Foundation estimates that these new proposals would raise about $3 trillion in revenue, which wouldn’t be enough to entirely fund all of Biden’s spending proposals. Meanwhile, the plan might modestly weigh on economic growth by about 1.47 percent in the long run, leading to about 518,000 fewer full-time jobs, the Tax Foundation estimates.
You might want to prepare for a slower period of growth in the context of rising taxes altogether, either by boosting your savings or reducing your expenses as much as you can.
“Should the U.S. adopt much more robust spending on social insurance like many folks in Europe have, the big takeaway there is Northern Europe finances those benefits through broad-based taxation,” Watson says. “Obviously Biden isn’t quite advocating to that extent in terms of spending, but that’s the direction you’d have to head if you want those kinds of benefits and that they’re going to be adequately financed in a sustainable manner.”