On Friday, the Washington Post reported that the U.S. Postal Service recently sent letters to 46 states and D.C. “warning that it cannot guarantee all ballots cast by mail for the November election will arrive in time to be counted — adding another layer of uncertainty ahead of the high-stakes presidential contest.”
The Post added:
“The letters sketch a grim possibility for the tens of millions of Americans eligible for a mail-in ballot this fall: Even if people follow all of their state’s election rules, the pace of Postal Service delivery may disqualify their votes.”
On Thursday, President Trump said he opposes an emergency $25 billion bail-out for the USPS — money vital if the agency is to handle what’s expected to be a pandemic-inspired tsunami of voting by mail this fall. He also opposes $3.6 billion in election aid for the states.
“Trump has been attacking mail balloting and the integrity of the vote for months, but his latest broadside makes explicit his intent to stand in the way of urgently needed money to help state and local officials administer elections during the coronavirus pandemic,” reports the Washington Post.
“The president is afraid of the American people,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “He’s been afraid for a while. He knows that, on the legit, it’d be hard for him to win.”
The Postal Service is perennially one of the most popular federal agencies; hundreds of millions of Americans and U.S. businesses are deeply dependent on getting and sending mail.
But postal workers are now said to be “quietly removing mail sorting machines from USPS facilities — the very machines that are responsible for sorting ballots,” reports Vice News, in a story corroborated by other news outlets.
According to Vice, the USPS proposed removing close to 15% of its mail-sorting machines — around 500 machines in all — in mid-May. It’s unclear who gave the order; this was before Louis DeJoy, a top Trump donor and Republican fundraiser, became postmaster general.
“It’ll force the mail to be worked by human hands in sorting. Guarantees to STOP productivity,” an inside source told the Post’s Jacqueline Alemany.
But Trump’s campaign against mail-in voting, the fierce political opposition to it, and the president’s well-known desire to privatize Americans’ postal system (established as a government agency in Article I of the U.S. Constitution) make for a complex issue — not the kind this president is noted for handling well.
The funding he opposes is part of a new coronavirus relief package that has been the focus of intense but thus far fruitless wrangling between congressional Democrats and the White House.
Meanwhile, Trump’s ususal rock-solid support from GOP lawmakers is showing signs of cracking on this issue.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the House Minority Leader, told CNBC on Friday that Republicans do not support withholding funding from the Postal Service “and, in a break with Trump, urged voters to cast ballots by mail,” reports the Post.
“The Postal Service will have the funding that it needs,” McCarthy said. “We will make sure of that. We want to make sure we have an accurate election. I think any Republican that gets their ballot in the mail should vote and make sure their vote is counted.”
Similarly, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), told reporters earlier this week: “We need to have enough money to do our best to be sure that the November elections are held safely and results are available.”
Trump seemingly ignores the fact that a lot of Republicans vote by mail, and depend on it for other vital services, especially in the wide open spaces of the Great Plains and the West.
A recent poll of voters planning to cast their ballots in the election found that nearly a quarter of Trump supporters — 24% — intend to vote by mail. Two and a half times as many Democrats do.
GOP mail-in voters even include Trump himself.
The elections department in Palm Beach FL — the Mar-a-Lago resort there is now the president’s official private residence — received requests on Wednesday for mail-in ballots for Trump and first lady Melania to vote in a local primary voting next week, reports the New York Times.
The president told White House reporters on Thursday that he wouldn’t veto legislation containing funds for the USPS, while alluding to his unsupported claim that mail-in ballots are susceptible to fraud.
Trump said “the reason the post office needs that much money is they have all of these millions of ballots coming in from nowhere and nobody knows from where and where they’re going.”
A Trump-appointed federal judge in Pittsburgh, where Republicans are trying to block an expansion of mail-in voting, has ordered the Trump campaign produce evidence of the president’s fraud claims, Bloomberg reported.
