“Your Honor, every one of these letters is addressed to Santa Claus. The Post Office has delivered them. Therefore the Post Office Department, a branch of the Federal Government, recognizes this man Kris Kringle to be the one and only Santa Claus.” From Miracle on 34th Street, 1947, www.quotes.net
Candidates: Know Where Your Voters Live AND Who Delivers Their Mail
Prediction: every major upset winner in the 2020 elections will have a file that matches each registered voter file with her or his 5- or 9-digit Zip Code file. If mail-in votes dominate the 2020 elections – as I now expect — candidates will need an extra layer of statistical inside information. Voting histories, registrations, party affiliations and unaffiliated, frequency of voting – all cross-indexed by zip code. 9-digit if possible, 5-digit if not. This could be a bonanza for political consultants who analyze data, because it can become life-or-death information for many political careers. All but the “safest” candidates can expect to survive only by knowing voters both by precinct (in-person voters) and by zip code (mail-in voters.)
The potential dominance of mail-in completely flips what works best in campaigns’ get-out-the-vote, Election Day, and ground game strategies. Geography and in-person canvassing before mail-in early voting begins will need to be heavily emphasized, and then sustained through Election Day. For the mail-in voter who has not yet mailed in her vote, every day is Election Day – the day that a candidate can “nail down” her vote. Similarly, working from Zip Code maps, campaign analysts can keep track of which Zip Codes have already been heavily voting by mail-in and which have not, and can adjust the form and frequency of appeals to voters according to the progress of mail-in ballots already cast.
There has never before been such a fluid, flow-of-votes analysis required of political candidates and campaigns. Few of them will be thoroughly prepared. Pointing to the single moment of Election Day, hitting the campaign’s Peak at just the right moment, may still be a goal worth pursuing. But, with the wide expansion of mail-in due to the COVID-19 pandemic, coming from behind to win by a nose is going to be much, much harder in 2020 than it ever has been in a presidential election year. Knowing who has already voted, and who has not, by Zip Code, can possibly make or break every important, competitive race anywhere in America.
According to zipcodes.com, Zip Code Facts and Statistics, there are 41, 696 Zip Codes in the United States. Zip code maps are available, and clustering zip codes is possible. While this is over 10X the number of US counties – about 3400, it is far smaller than the number of US voting precincts – roughly 100,000 according to quora.com. The number of voting precincts will shrink dramatically in 2020 as communities shift to mail-in voting. This year, I think the historical voting data for precincts will be better used in conjunction with Zip Code identifiers for purpose of analysis.
The campaign that seizes the initiative to explicitly appeal to the not-yet-voted registered voter, as the march to Election Day counts down, well may provide the biggest surprises once all the votes are counted. So many aspects of an apparently-routine bureaucratic process will have to change in this year’s elections, and so little time has been devoted to dealing with these changes, that very big surprises could be in the offing – for one or both parties. [Traditionally, counting mail-in votes has been a special source of successfully-rigged election outcomes. Such potential rigging can only be countered by having a campaign representative on hand and alert, physically present during the counting of those ballots. Having a friendly judge, or attempts to ”reactively rig” votes can’t be counted on to remediate damage from an opponent rigging the vote count.]
Can’t Ignore the Chain of Custody: Possible Union Influence
Whether partisan professionals are trying to rig the system or trying to prevent rigging, they should make sure to know who the mail carriers are for each Zip Code. Even if only for self-protection, campaign professionals need to know who picks up mail from Democrat-leaning or GOP-leaning Zip Codes. Having that information should pop up “red flags” and “green flags” for where attempts to accelerate, delay, or prevent delivery appear most likely to have occurred. While prudent candidates will have poll-watchers in every precinct where there is in-person voting, they now will have to deploy a small army of “mail-delivery monitors,” possibly including monitors inside post office premises. Candidates have to have rapid-response teams to jump on any anomalies in pick-up and delivery. Every campaign will need a separate field organization to track mail-in ballets received by voters, sent back by voters, dated and time stamped at post office, how many delivered to destination, when opened and counted at destination – how do 5- and 9-s match with received, sent back, dated, delivered to end point, counted cross-indexed to registered voters? Anomalies will appear of there.
Get to know mail carriers by 5- and especially 9-digit coverage. What if lots of mail-in ballots are coming back, but some 9s aren’t? Then, try to get general idea of how mail-in is going in each 9. Each step needs to be plugged into the matrix of how many have voted and how many haven’t; by week until Oct 10, then daily. If you don’t have this info, you will lose the election, more likely than not.
The American Postal Workers Union Will Not be Impartial in Spirit – Do Not Avoid Them
A union with about 220,000 members, the APWU is desperately seeking Congressional support for deficit financing for the USPS. If President Trump seriously wants to get re-elected, he will largely defuse this issue by initiating long-term funding – through 2024 — for the USPS as part of COVID Crisis funding. Whether or not this happens, GOP candidates cannot just “write off” the possibilities of chain-of-coverage misbehavior. They must “hunker down,” get to know the mail carriers in their districts, and do their best to help the USPS “keep it fair” where mail-in ballots are concerned. No one will be afraid of threats from a losing candidate. The only “equalizer” is to treat mail carriers as having the power they really have. Get to know them.
Verify Mail-in Ballots: Six -Step Chain of Custody:
1) Receipt of mail-in ballots by 5- and 9- digit zip code; have sample recipients to double check vs 9-dtgit zip; count ballots mailed vs registered voter count, 5 and 9
2) Pick-up and return of signed ballots by …USPS, Fed Ex, UPS, in-person.
3) Sort of mail-in ballots to end point:
4) date and time stamp applied to mail-in ballots
5) delivery to end-point (county clerk, courthouse, other specified location)
6) ballots actually counted at end destination, by 5- and 9- digit codes if possible
In some jurisdictions, voters may have to request mail-in ballots. The verification process would have to add two steps: receipt of request, response to request.
Mail-in statistics also can be aggregated – how many received, sent back, delivered to end-point,counted, by 5- and 9- All of this will be easier for Democratic Party candidates. They should not be lazy about using their edge with postal workers.
Returning Mail-in Ballots: many states, such as Minnesota, already encourage voters to use UPS and Fed Ex to deliver mail-in ballots. This represents another opportunity for campaigns to keep track of mail-in statistics. Candidates fearing possible delay or mishandling by the USPS could alert their supporters to mail-in via UPS or Fed-Ex.
Partisanship Factoid: From July 26 1775 to February 20, 1792, the US Post Office was under legislative authority – first the Continental Congress, then the US Congress after the Constitution was ratified. From 1792 until July 1, 1971, 179 years, every postmaster in every US Post Office was a presidential appointee – known as a patronage job. When Eisenhower succeeded Truman in 1953, almost every postmaster changed from a Democrat to a Republican. When JFK succeeded Ike in 1961, the process reversed. This was a well-established tradition, one that gave local advocates of the President’s political party some influence over the handling of the mails. In 1971, the Post Office was reorganized into the USPS, and postmasters became regular civil servants with no necessary political connections. Currently, the rank-and-file seem to have the most potential power with respect to mail-in ballots.
Quote from the APWU website: “The Postal Service is in a crisis, caused by the Coronavirus, and Congress needs to act, urgently. Call your Senators and tell them to support stimulus funding for the USPS: 844-402-1001. The Coronavirus shutdown is plummeting postal revenues while increasing costs. The Postal Service could run out of money by the end of the summer and the Trump administration is trying to leverage the crisis to sacrifice our public Postal Service at the altar of private profit.”https://apwu.org/one-team-one-fight [emphasis mine]
Without active verification by candidates, there is no surefire method for voters to be certain that their votes have been delivered and accurately counted, not lost or discarded or rejected somewhere along the way. In areas of local dominance by one political party or the other, there will surely be a strong temptation to suppress, or to cavalierly reject, votes cast for the weaker local party.
Will 2020 be The Year of The Zip Code Follies?
Flo Ziegfeld may have produced the most popular Follies in American history. As of today, the two major US political parties could be about to produce the most expensive, extensive, and conflict-bedeviled public Folly in the annals of Government activity since the days of Roman Emperors’ “Bread and Circuses.” Wise campaign managers and candidates will look to the Zip Code Directory to save their bacon.
Repeat Prediction: every major upset winner in the 2020 elections will have a cross-indexed registered voter Zip Code file – and use it.