I think there may be a gap in assumptions here. I believe the people you are arguing against are saying that Trump will just ignore any injunction and do it anyway (or else have his desires carried out before any protest makes it to court) by having loyalists in federal law enforcement order their subordinates to carry out his wishes, and that once they get their hands on the ballots, any enforcement afterward is moot, because the chain of custody has been broken and Trump effectively gets what he wants.
There’s really no risk. These postal employees will just say they were doing their job and following the directives they had been given. It’s not their responsibility to decide whether or not a directive is legal.
They’d face greater liability for disobeying the directive.
Here’s a similar scenario. You’re a police officer. When you come on duty, your chief tells you he wants you stop every van you see on the road today and search inside it. You may ask about warrants but the chief tells you it’s all been taken care of and everything’s legit.
So you go out and in the next eight hours, you stop and search inside thirty vans.
The next day there’s a huge story on the front pages about how the local chief decided to start his own program of searching for terrorists and told his officers to search vans because he had a hunch that’s where the terrorists would be hiding.
The chief is suspended and facing criminal charges. But what happens to you and the other officers who actually did the illegal searches? Do you get fired?
The answer is almost certainly not. You were following the order of your legal supervisor. Even though those orders were illegal, you’re not held responsible for following them.
There are limits. If the chief had ordered you to shoot every van driver you saw, you wouldn’t be able to persuasively argue that you thought that was a legal order.
And I would say that postal employees would know that it was illegal to destroy mail. And if local and/or state police saw a postal employee pulling his truck over and setting fire to ballots, they would arrest that employee.
I find it unlikely that “I was just following orders” would be a good defense to committing criminal acts.
You keep saying injunction like they’re automatic. They’re not, as I’m sure you know. You have to appear before a judge and ask him to issue an injunction. And then the judge decides whether or not there is a need for an injunction to be issued.
Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017. He issued a travel ban on January 27. There was an injunction issued against it.
But you know what’s happened between January 2017 and now? Trump has appointed one hundred and ninety-six federal judges.
Let’s say that maybe the current court system is a little more likely to defer to the President’s judgment on discretionary matters.
Good point. They should make sure they don’t do something as stupid as ordering postal employees to burn the ballots in the middle of a public street. Because I’m sure that was their plan.
Could be. It is the Trump Administration 
I’m sure the “plan” would involve tampering with ballots, something that the postal employees would know is illegal.
Here’s the scenario. You’re a postal employee. Some time next month, you come into work and you’re assigned to sort incoming mail. But the manager of your local office shows you a new directive that just was issued by the Postmaster General. It tells you to separate out any mail-in ballots you come across while sorting the mail and put them into a red mailbag that’s been put there for that purpose.
You suspect that this may be illegal interference with the mail. You have two choices:
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Act on your belief that this is illegal and refuse to comply with the directive. You’re informed that you’re suspended for insubordination because you’re refusing to follow the directives that were issued by the Postmaster General. If it turns out you guessed wrong, you’ll be fired. If it turns out you guessed right, you’ll probably be allowed to go back to work at some future point.
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Decide to do what the directive says. If it turns out your suspicion was wrong and the order was legal, you keep your job. If it turns out your suspicion was right and the order was illegal, you’re covered and you keep your job. You didn’t issue the order so you’re not responsible for its illegality. Nobody expects you to be a legal expert.
I suspect over ninety percent of postal employees will choose option #2. And they’ll grumble about having to do the extra work caused by the suspension of the postal employees who choose option #1.
I was trying to avoid insulting your intelligence by spelling out every obvious intermediate step, but since you’re going there, we’ll go there. Yes, someone would have to file suit. Know who has standing to do so? All 50 states plus the District of Columbia, plus the House of Representatives plus Joe Biden and God only knows who else might have standing here. Like the travel ban, it would probably be expedited because of the emergent and irreparable damage posed to the elections. After all, you can recount votes, but you can’t un-shred a ballot.
Let’s be pessimistic and say that only the red states would file suit, but take pause and reflect that red states also represent Republican voters who can only vote via absentee ballot… rural residents, members of the Armed Forces, voters in retirement homes. Would the red states be content to quietly sit back and let those voters be disenfranchised, not being totally certain whether they’re tossing out Republican votes? There would definitely be some red-state defectors.
shrug Maybe, maybe not, but the 9th circuit continues to be a thorn in his side to this day (the same one that originally enjoined the travel ban). The court has tilted right, as it’s been doing for 20 years, but I’m not prepared to rend the hairshirt and declare it a puppet of the Republican party just yet. Especially not the 9th circuit.
The Postal Workers Union would be all over an illegal unjust firing so fast it would make your head spin. Add to that to the list of parties empowered to file suit over an illegal order.
I mean… yes, Trump has eroded certain institutions here and there, but I don’t think you appreciate how many different people, parties, processes, and laws would have to utterly fail for this to happen. No doubt there will be some failures and shenanigans, as there have been in past elections, but I just cannot see circumstances that favor EVERYTHING failing simultaneously.
This isn’t just me saying it’s illegal. This is me pointing out that it’s illegal, and the illegality of it would trigger all sorts of actions that would make it very difficult for such an order to be carried out. Not impossible, but extremely, extremely unlikely.
Okay, “all sorts of actions” would be triggered. But what would happen to the ballots sitting in those sacks in the meantime while the the “actions” were being dealt with by unions and the courts?
You’re repeatedly asking me questions, not engaging the answers, and simply following with other questions. As I said before, this is a textbook example of sealioning and I won’t be entertaining it.
I am asking real questions about real situations that you present. You are mischaracterizing me and misunderstanding me, but I can live with that. See ya.
You’re saying this like you think the decisions made by the court system will simply be based on the issues of the law. Which I do not feel is realistic.
The Republicans have been appointing Republican judges for the last three years for a reason. The courts may not openly rule that a Republican President can break the law. But they will lean as far to the right as they can get away with to avoid issuing a decision that hurts the Republicans. And that’s all the gray area that somebody like Trump needs.
And even if some courts do their duty and issue decisions against Trump, the ultimate decisions in the court system will be made in the Supreme Court. If lower courts issue decisions that help the Republicans, the Supreme Court can stay out of it. But if lower courts issue decisions that hurt Republicans, the Supreme Court has the option of stepping in and reversing that decision.
They don’t have to rule that Trump has the legal right to collect mail-in ballots. They just have to avoid ruling that he can’t do it and then sit back and watch while he does it.
It’s not an illegal firing or an illegal order because the APWU says it is. It only becomes an illegal firing or an illegal order when a court says it is.
I had to re-Google “sealioning.” :rolleyes: No, ThelmaLou isn’t sealioning. Even if she were, I think it is against the Rules of this Forum to accuse her of it.
Look, this discussion is going in circles. Let me present the bigger picture:
I think all informed rational Americans will agree that there are many GOP operatives throughout the country gaming out various ways to subvert the November election. Surely you understand that, HMS Irruncible? They are operating with much more information than us, here at SDMB. They know which District judges can be bribed; which Circuits are likely to rule in their favor. What talking points Sean Hannity can put forth to accuse crime-fighters of liberal overreach. And they’re feeling their way — I’d not be surprised if some of them are even studying this very thread, trying to understand how orders against mailed-ballots will play out in the courts. The stakes are huge: The Koch brothers and some of the other super-rich would spend billions to ensure GOP victory. Putin, even more. These are people that can make raped children flee in fear for their lives. It’s child’s-play for them to find one key postmaster who will disobey a court order. Throwing an election into legal chaos is victory for them.
I’m sure some Dopers are smarter than most GOP operatives. But we’re outnumbered, and the GOP and Kremlin haven’t revealed all their tricks. Chances are good that Trump banning mail-in ballots will NOT be the key to successful GOP cheating. It will be six other things, some of which we won’t even be able to think of before the fact.
The Pollyannish belief that America is still a country of laws and fair elections would be hilarious if the topic weren’t so utterly tragic.
Yes, it is going in circles.
Both accusing another of sea looming and pointing it out is against various rules. Both of you stop it. You see something you think is rule breaking you report it. That’s it.
This thread doesn’t get better I’m closing it.
I hope that’s clear.
Isn’t this the “I was just following orders” defense?
The task before me here is analogous to debunking someone who thinks the moon landings were faked. I don’t know every single detail of the Apollo program. In fact the moon-landing truthers know more about Apollo than I do. Yet I do know enough about space travel to understand it’s highly plausible. I do understand that the more people a conspiracy depends on, the more likely it is to be exposed and fail. And I also understand that moon-landing truthers are so convinced of their own correctness that they misunderstand, ignore, or misinterpret every piece of data you feed them. This is how I know they’re wrong even though I can’t process every “whatabout” that they throw at me.
That’s exactly what’s going on with the putative conspiracy where Trump steals the election by passing an executive order that lets him skim ballots or throw the postal system into chaos. Yes there are vulnerabilities, no it’s not likely that every single one of them will fail.
Some of you may find it offensive that I describe your pet theory as a conspiracy theory. But before you get too offended, take a gander at Exhibit A below of the tinfoil hattery in play here:
Yes, you heard that right, Septimus suspects there are dark operatives monitoring this very thread and skimming our ideas for throwing the election. I’m stumped as to how to even respond to that.
And again, I guess it’s theoretically possible that Brad Parscale is combing through this unremarkable corner of the internet for ideas on how to subvert the election. I cannot dispute that it’s possible. But I find it more likely that this just exemplifies that some of you are close to losing their minds.
For the 10th time, this is false. Here I want to speak to a matter of fact that’s been overlooked a number of times. Trump’s strategy of injecting chaos and running out the clock is well known. In the case of the election, it works against him, because if there’s too much chaos then neither candidate may end up with a majority of electors, which leads to a contingent election in the (Democratically controlled) House of Representatives. And if there’s somehow so much chaos that even the contingent election doesn’t happen, then on 1/20/2021, Trump simply Stops. Being. President. It falls to Nancy Pelosi.
That is the big picture. It will take more than disrupting the mail. It will take more than bribing a judge. It will take the complicity of a majority of states and both houses of Congress. That is the big, giant, huge picture. Nobody else seems capable of processing this fact, so I’m not hopeful that you will either, but the big picture is bigger than even the vast conspiracy you’re imagining.
I understand that America’s institutions have failed so utterly over the past couple of years that there is a tendency to protect oneself from further shock and horror by expecting everything to fail and go up in flames. I struggle with that myself. But that position is wrong, just as wrong as the naive belief that everything is going to be constitutional fair play.
Look, to paraphrase something I heard elsewhere, I cannot imagine a scenario where Trump submits to a fair election without dirty tricks, nor a scenario where he leaves office quietly without leaving a trail of destruction in his path. I also cannot imagine a scenario where he gets away with it. I don’t know what’s going to happen, it’s going to get bad before it gets worse, but I’m pointing out there are still guardrails in place, and I think we’re going a little overboard imagining a vast, competent conspiracy that has a big secret bag of tricks that we can’t anticipate or counter.
“Huh, you really believe that?” That’s the catchphrase of flat-earthers, moon-landing deniers, and anti-vaxxers. Don’t fall for it.
Nitpick: The vote in House of Reps to pick Potus when no EC majority is available is done by state, not by seat. IIRC, the Rs have more states than the Ds in the House.
Sea looming?
But I do agree that we’ve reached the point of going in circles.
I think we’ve staked out our positions and made them clear. And we seem to agree on a lot of issues. Both sides appear to agree that the Trump administration in particular and the Republican party in general would be willing to engage in some questionable acts. The difference in our positions seems to be over how much the institutions of our government would resist these acts.
At this point the disagreement cannot be resolved. We won’t know whose opinions are right until the Trump administration tries something and we see how the institutions respond.
In terms of simple representation, Republicans have 26 states. But some of those states have deadlocked delegations and might end up not voting at all.
The contingencies that might occur in that case are complicated.
Here is a breakdown of various contingent scenarios.
No, it’s not clear cut, and we may see some strange fights over points of constitutional law that the general public hasn’t had to think about in a century or two. I think if the Republicans are backed into a corner, they will take us to all those weird places, but it’s definitely not anybody’s first choice.
Are there state laws dictating how a postal employee needs to treat mail?
My impression is that laws about mail handling are all at the federal level.
I took a quick look about, and could not find any state laws to do with the USPS.
Do you have any examples?