The United States Postal Service delivers 472.1 million pieces of mail every day. They calculate processing 19.1 million mail items every hour, 327,838 per minute, 5,464 every second. Employing more than 600,000 career and non-career employees, the Postal Service pays out more than $2 billion in salaries and benefits every two weeks. In addition to delivering our mail they processed 6.6 million passport applications in 2019,
3.5 million corporate emails daily, deliver to 42,000 zip codes, and traveled in excess of 1.34 billion miles delivering the mail in 2019. Well, and yes, they are in serous debt. The mail service has lost more than $69 billion over the last eleven years, and has debt and other liabilities of $143 billion in 2018. And, you already know this, the United States Postal Service is suddenly a campaign issue. President Trump is reluctant to provide federal funding for the Post Office. His opponents want a re-modeled version and subsequent funding. And, of course, the real issue is whether or not mail-in voting will be the nation-wide rule in the 2020 election. And, that is a hard one.
It's an especially flammable topic right now. The pandemic has altered the coming college football season, the way colleges and universities operate, and how businesses function. In the margins of election season are questions about polling places, people getting to them, and sanitation/security for American voters at the polls. In one corner are the mail advocates who insist in-person voting will be problematic, perhaps dangerous, and seriously limit voting by minorities, the elderly, and other special needs citizens. In the other corner are originalists who insist that our founders were insistent about voters traveling to the voting places, even when imperiled by the distance and the undeveloped nation. Travel to remote polling places and in-person voting in early America is really not prescribed by the Constitution of the United States and is presumed for the most part. But, even our very first Postmaster General, the venerable Benjamin Franklin, couldn't have envisioned mail in voting even with their lower population numbers.
In my personal opinion, mail-in voting poses multiple voting dangers, greater than those encountered when we vote in-person. The Postal Service already warned about possible delays in transmitting ballots due to weather, normal human error, and deliberate voter fraud and interference. Someone noted that around 1.8 million deceased American voters remain registered to vote, making their mail-in ballots more than comic relief and actually conceivable. The in-person vote with picture identification, my topic later this week, seems less accessible to to the voter hacks among us.
Voter hacks? Surely not. But, oh yes, there are system geniuses who can hack our most protected technological systems, even a well-designed mail methodology. And, yes, they can invade in-person profiles and sophisticated identification systems as well. You know the truth. Evil can permeate any human system. So, both systems are insecure to some degree. But, even the most ardent USPS champions concede that the mail-in system may be more susceptible to criminal slickness than the in-person vote.
Does the Bible address mail-in voting or in-person voting? Not quite. There are many references, however, about honesty, integrity, and doing the right thing. Give these a thought---
No one who practices deceit shall dwell in my house; no one who utters lies shall
continue before my eyes.
Psalm 101:7, ESV
Bread gained by deceit is sweet to a man, but afterward his mouth will be full of gravel.
Proverbs 20: 17, ESV
See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to
human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to
Christ.
Colossians 2: 8, ESV
So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
James 4: 17, ESV
So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.
1 Peter 2: 1, ESV
No, Scripture doesn't specifically address dishonesty at the polls. But, intentions to deceive and promote dishonest behaviors are clearly wrong, even in the political realm. There is a system of absentee balloting available to those hindered from traveling to a voting place. Still, if there is to be a special delivery in election 2020, let it be the special delivery of a well-thought vote honestly presented by an honorable American citizen who pictures voting as a significant matter.
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