First of all, I assure you this is not a LARP. I’m a very very low level GOP guy in PA. Second, I want to thank whoever first posted this here. Earlier today, someone posted a link to the PA Data site. If you use a desktop, I can walk you through what the site appears to show.
This is a link to a PA state data site that tracks mail ballots requested and whether they were returned.
https://data.pa.gov/d/mcba-yywm/visualization
When you click that link, then click “No thanks” and don’t sign in. From there, there’s a tab marked “Date of Birth”, click the ellipses and select “sort ascending”. It starts with a whole bunch of people born on 1/1/1800 which is a coding tool for domestic violence victims. But if you then go to the bottom “next” button and start scrolling across the pages, there’s literally hundreds upon hundreds of people born between 1850-1920 that not only requested mail in ballots, but also returned them. And the dates are all notated. Many people are 120+ years old.
I assure each of you that this is in the hands of Trump’s lawyers in Philly at this moment.
Lots not true....
HOWEVER. If the USPS used their Anthrax tracing technologies, there would be routing markers placed on the ballots going through the mail. Ballots not going through the mail would be detected, as well as strange routing, and bundles being sent. Supposedly, there is a digital image of front and back of each piece sent. I think that is why Pelosi tried to give USPS $25 billion to upend their in place postal security during the election.
DHS did not print anyone's ballot, nor provide the paper stock that anyone's ballot was printed on.
USPS was (officially, at least) handling only outer envelopes. Once actual ballots are separated from outer envelopes, as they necessarily have to be for counting to ensure vote secrecy, nothing the USPS did as part of their official operating procedures would be traceable to actual ballots that have been counted (or even just separated from outer envelopes in preparation for counting).
Only one correction. They would have a count, by force and destination. They would know how many ballots were sent and where they were sent to. This can almost certainly be used against a recount to establish mail in ballots that were counted but never mailed.
You have more faith in the USPS than I do. They lose mail all the time, and they have no way of knowing who is actually picking up mail from mailboxes. They also have no way of knowing when individual letter carriers are diverting or destroying ballots being mailed either to voters or back to the elections board after the voter completes them. As we've already seen, not only are their individual carriers deliberately mishandling ballots (and other mail), but there are people in USPS management directing workers to backdate postmarks on ballots.
I have little faith in the people. The tracking system is a scanner and a database though, and that I can understand, believe, and audit for fuckery.