(Reuters) – More than a dozen states as early as this week are expected to prosecute the Trump administration over cuts to the U.S. Postal Service, which they say post-in-ballots in the election of November may be delayed, Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh said on Monday.
Mailboxes of the US Postal Service (USPS) are seen stored outside a USPS post office in the Bronx district of New York City, New York, US, August 17, 2020. REUTERS / Mike Segar
Frosh said between 15 and 20 Democratic attorneys general review legal arguments, and he expects the states involved to participate in one, or possibly several, lawsuits.
“We are talking to other AG offices and expect to take action soon,” Frosh said.
Republican Trump, who is pursuing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden in opinion polls, said last week that he was opposed to Democratic efforts to include funds for the Postal Service and Election Infrastructure in coronavirus delivery legislation because he wants to restrict post-voting during the pandemic. Twice as many people were able to vote by mail as in 2016 due to the pandemic, according to some estimates.
Democrats have called for reduction of overtime, restrictions on additional travel for mail delivery and new sorting and delivery policies for mail as changes that threaten to deliver mail delivery from ballots and other critical mail such as medicines.
Trump denied Monday that he was trying to undermine the Post Office’s ability to process mail messages.
“No, we are not manipulating,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News. “We want to make it for less money, much better, always take care of our postal workers.”
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican, has asked Trump to postpone the operational changes until after the Nov. 3 election. The post office is a “perennial drain on the Treasury,” he said in a letter. “But the radical changes made just weeks before the start of voting – however fiscally sound it may be based – would place the solvency of the Post Office above the legitimacy of the government itself.”
It is unclear whether Yost would participate in any legal action.
Frosh said in Maryland, the service has pulled out six sorting machines.
“They pulled four out at one location,” he said at the Baltimore City Democratic stronghold.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said in an interview that it would be unconstitutional to physically obstruct someone from voting or block the roads so people could not go to polling stations.
“It is also illegal to intentionally defunct the postal service or to dismantle close to 700 mail sorting machines in major cities across the country or to remove blue mailboxes, which we have heard about,” Tong said.
Tong said he had gathered evidence of mail delivery problems in Connecticut and that the office was “flooded with complaints” about delays.
New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement on Monday that she intended to pursue the cuts and called Trump’s attempt to “interfere” with postal operations an “authoritarian coup.”
The Democratic-led House of Representatives will meet on Saturday to consider legislation with changes to levels for Postal Services that were on January 1, 2020.
Trump’s appointed postmaster general here on Monday voted in favor of testifying before Congress next week on cuts to service.
Report by Karen Freifeld and Sarah N. Lynch; edited by Noeleen Walder and Grant McCool
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