Is the postal service targeting its services? Looks that way.
by John P. Flannery
In my most recent podcast, we reviewed the increasingly inefficient conditions that prevailed at the Post Office that appear to threaten the delivery of mail in ballots in the imminent presidential election, that is, the removal,of sorting machines, of the street mail boxes and cutting back on overtime for workers to deliver the mail. See podcast— https://anchor.fm/john-flannery1/episodes/Episode-25---Trump-Sets-Out-To-Steal-the-Election---by-John-P--Flannery-ei8e1t
In the course of that podcast I interviewed an award winning reporter, Peter Lance, who vouched for the research of a postal contractor, Claire McKean.
Claire’s study revealed a pattern of zip code targeting that followed the partisan history of the selected zip codes.
One of Claire’s principal findings was that —
“That the UNIQUE choice for the Zip Code Zones in the [Post Office’s] ESAS study [commenced in July] would provide detailed data that … could STRATEGICALLY SLOW MAIL-IN VOTES to Democratic/Liberal Blue Zip Code Zones and SPEED THEIR MAILING in Republican/Conservative Red Zip Codes zones.”
Rather than re-state Claire’s findings, I’ve enclosed her memorandum summarizing her methods and findings.
It strongly argues for a full audit of how and where and when the Post Office cut its services and how its allocating services prospectively.
JPF
— — — — — — — —
MEMORANDUM By Claire McKean.
[Updated 8.20.20 re: The USPS’s use of the ESAS testing program to key voting data in Democratic and Republic Zip Code Zones: email: lupusluna321@gmail.com ]
My name is Claire McKean. I deliver mail for a contractor to the USPS in Eastern Oregon.
I also do research for an investigative reporter.
On July 17th, I came across an article in PostalTimes — a trade mag for the USPS.
It included a letter regarding the Expedited To Street/Afternoon Sortation (ESAS) program touted as “an enhancement to the current Expedited Preferential Mail (EPM) Delivery Program.”
This was one significant source of data for my analysis.
This new program was ostensibly designed to “reduce morning office time to allow carriers to leave for the street earlier.”
The USPS is testing this new ESAS program at more than 380 sites around the country from Atlanta, GA to Seattle, WA.
The question I had was the standard by which the individual sites were selected, particularly whether the partisan constituence of the individual sites were a factor.
Each site is the location of a given post office.
MY RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS
The hypothesis I tested was whether it was possible that this new test program (which was to run for 30–60 days starting on July 25th) could give the Postmaster General political targeting data focusing on districts where President Trump could face the greatest opposition in November OR, the alternative, whether the ESAS program was instead a non — political efficiency measure.
MY FINDINGS
When I drilled down on the test sites I found that the populations in the Zip Codes zones were heavily skewed toward Democratic voters.
This I accomplished by comparing the voting histories of populations in each of those ESAS Zip Codes Zones with the voting histories in the relevant counties.
This was my second source of data, a powerful tool that makes available an array of data.
This second data mining tool I employed is a real estate informational database called bestplaces.net.
By way of example, I studied the test sites in Atlanta, the first entry on the test site list, and thebestplaces home page led me to DeKalb County, GA.
That single url revealed incredible amounts of historical political data from the last five elections.
I then added in the populations of each test site zip code.
Zip Code 30340 is in DeKalb County and this site reveals that the population of that specific Zip Code was 29,394. It also broke down the population by gender race and income.
At that point I decided to check EVERY ZIP CODE on the ESAS test site list and what I found was eye-opening.
The total population of the test sites, by Zip Code, that vote for Democrats was 17,368,620.
By comparison, the same information for test site counties that vote Republican was less than half the number of voters: at 8,056,265.
That is a dramatic difference.
Looking for other clarifying characteristics I found that the top 10 test site zip code populations that vote Democratic were heavily urban areas including: Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Houston, Dallas, Detroit, and two heavily Democratic counties in New York City: The Bronx and Queens.
By contrast, there were test sites, in the battleground states where President Trump narrowly won in 2016, and polling that shows Mr. Trump behind in polling at this stage of the presidential campaign, namely, Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Detroit.
The total population in targeted ESAS test sites, the top 10, that vote Democratic was 5,536,586.
The top ten test site zip code populations that vote Republican are: Springfield MO, St Petersburg FL, Monmouth County N.J., Macomb County MI, Jacksonville FL, Pasco WA, Fort Worth, Texas Hillsborough County NH, York PA, and Sioux Falls SD.
Compared to the Top 10 Democratic test sites which are in huge racially diverse urban areas, the top 10 GOP test sites were moderately populated cities or rural areas in decidedly Red States.
Total zip code population in the top ten targeted test sites that vote Rep is 1,620,716 which represented barely 1/3 of the populations in Democratic ESAS test sites.
A REVIEW — HERE’S HOW I DID IT:
I googled the zip code 30340. Got the towns in that zip code. Then went to the Bestplaces site for Doraville and scrolled to the map at the bottom of the page and checked for the other two towns of Tucker and Pittsburg to see how they also voted. Pittsburg is a subdivision in Atlanta.
Did the same for the rest of the zip codes.
https://www.bestplaces.net/voting/city/georgia/tucker
See screen capture of just the first page from that link below:
By doing this meticulously with EVERY ZIP CODE ZONE in the study, I uncovered granular details on the Liberal/Conservative make-up of each Zip Code zone and population/political leanings data, that taken together helped me form my thesis:
CONCLUSION — That the UNIQUE choice for the Zip Code Zones in the ESAS study would provide detailed data that COULD further a plan — if corrupt USPS officials decided to use it — wherein they could STRATEGICALLY SLOW MAIL-IN VOTES to Democratic/Liberal Blue Zip Code Zones and SPEED THEIR MAILING in Republican/Conservative Red Zip Codes zones.
THE IMPLICATION:
Considering the recent efforts by the Postal Service to REMOVE MAIL BOXES and SORTING MACHINES, this analysis of publicly available data is further evidence that this ESAS study is a thinly veiled contrivance to direct the limited resources of the U.S. Postal Service to serve the President’s own political ends.
