NEW ROLES FOR THE POST OFFICE AND THE CENSUS BUREAU

Catastrophic Thinking can be applied to all policy formation, not just governance associated with cataclysms. Especially when the Constitution had certain principles in mind, which as society evolved, the principles have fallen by the wayside. One example is the Post Office, which is created in the Constitution and shows how important communication networks are to America in the eyes of the founding fathers. Now technology has emerged using electricity to communicate, but the Post Office is still only administering communication networks of the seventeenth century. The Post Office has long administered the mail network. Now we have e-mail networks. See the connection? The Post Office should be empowered and directed to create a national e-mail network, with the same rules for postal fraud to apply to e-mail. You see, a communications network is a Strategic Asset. You could even keep the private e-mail network as a competitor, as long as it remains operated by American interests. So Essential Concepts, Inc. would have an email address of essentialconceptsinc.ia.usps instead of essentialconceptsinc.com. Maybe to differentiate between common names like John Doe, you could have zip codes and other identifying features like johndoe.POBOX100.50515.ia.usps. Access to the USPS network would only be available to American users, so international spoofers could not access it. Real identities would have to be used to discourage scammers and spammers. Rather than advertising, the Post Office would create prefunded accounts that would finance the network and assess a fee like postage for the use of e-mails. Part of the fee would be a use tax to be paid to social security. Otherwise, the account would set fees to allow for full financing of the Post Office from the fee proceeds (and the sale of postage stamps). Each user would pre-fund their account by checks, postal money orders, or credit cards.

In other blogs I have alluded to using the Census Bureau to objectively draw Congressional voting districts, based on Census Bureau data. The Census Bureau already has a nation-wide network of offices. Its duties greatly expand once every ten years. What is proposed is a Constitutional Amendment to greatly expand the Census Bureau functions so it continuously monitors the database of America voters and other citizens. For example, there were over five million dead people on the roles of Social Security because we have no adequate means to police the accuracy of our national data bases. “Zombies in the Workplace? No, Just Fraud,” by Kelli Grant, March 11, 2015, www.cnbc.com. So “Social Security Pays Millions to Dead People,” by Blake Ellis, September 7, 2011, www.money.cnn.com. Washington finally tried to get a grip on this scandal with H.R. 624, the Social Security Number Fraud Prevention Act of 2017, which became Public Law No, 115-59. Nowadays a search for social security fraud does not yield aggregate numbers but many, many cases across the country where individual cases of fraud were successfully prosecuted. At one point in 2015 there were over 65,000 people over 113 years of age with currently active social security numbers, although only 39 people were known to be alive who were over 112 years of age. See Kelli Grant article, already cited.

A national database should be maintained by the Census Bureau for both entitlement and voting purposes, as well as for the Constitutionally-mandated citizen count. H.R.624 should be expanded in its scope to include voting roles. The benefits of this proposal for catastrophes should be apparent. If our systems cannot adequately account for people in good times, then how can we expect entitlements and voting to be administered when thousands, if not millions, of Americans perish suddenly in a catastrophe.

Beyond the database, we saw allegations of massive fraud in the 2020 elections. The media wants to debate whether such allegations are true. That is irrelevant. The damage to the election process has been done. A significant number of citizens do not believe in our system of vote compilation. To correct that we should allow the government to own the voting machines and set them up at all government-controlled and secure locations. Every police station, fire department, every City Hall, every County Courthouse, every military base every embassy, and every post office should have voting machine kiosks and be open during regular business hours. Rather than the ridiculous spectacle of long lines on voting day, we should have a voting week from November 1 to the second Tuesday following the second Monday of November. Mail in ballots and drop boxes which have been proven to be susceptible to fraud, will be replaced by a nationwide voting system so that you can vote in any state for an Iowa election if you are an Iowa resident at the voting machine kiosks located in government secure locations where ever you are located. The voting machines would be tied into the regional Census Bureau offices for each city, where the results would be tabulated and released to state and federal authorities. No more late ballots, or absentee ballots, or questions about the pencil -filled-in ballots. It would all be electronically tabulated, like the driver license tests we have in Iowa.

As for accessing the machines, voters could register to vote at any time at these kiosks before the voting week and be assigned a voter identification, which would at least be partially defined by the person themselves. Then they would go into the kiosk, where a dedicated land line to the census bureau would be dialed up. A key code would be issued for the voter to access their ballot. Then over the entire database, where ever the voter is located, that ballot would be used up. No more multiple ballots or multiple state voting would be possible.

Since state and local governments also have elections, they could tie into the federal system or maintain their own state-wide systems, at their legislature’s discretion. If they choose to be part of the federal process, then the ballots would have to be submitted at least a month in advance, with software according to Census Bureau specifications, to be included on the screens in the kiosk machines. There would still need to be paper ballot backups and rules to handle power outages. The law should allow for power outages for A LIMITED time to not affect the election process.

Now, there are issues related to nursing homes and other citizens unable to vote. Such locations could be served by mobile kiosks, administered by police, fire fighters, or other government employees. If by these measures, it may be inferred that private citizens are no longer to be trusted, well, the bad behaviors by the relative few have poisoned the process for the honest majority of volunteer poll workers.

This should be an interesting blog.