Derrick Johnson, the president of the NAACP, said Thursday that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy
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“It goes beyond contempt,” Johnson told The Hill. “When you take sorters out of the Post Office, they are explicitly introduced to be fast sorters to make sure email is timely, and the reason makes it faster, that lies.”
Johnson said the changes, described in a NAACP lawsuit filed Thursday against the Postal Service and DeJoy, were electorally motivated.
“It’s not just about undermining elections and undermining democracy, it’s endangering the lives of people,” Johnson said.
In the lawsuit, the NAACP claims that the Post Office did not follow the proper legal procedures before DeJoy’s program was implanted, making the reforms illegal.
The NAACP further claims that the changes have resulted “in unreliable service delivery and extensive delays.”
A spokesman for the Post Office quoted The Hill as saying in a statement issued Monday by DeJoy, saying the service was “ready to handle any volume of election mail it receives this fall”.
And DeJoy on Tuesday supported his ambitious reform program as 20 states threatened to prosecute the Postal Service.
“That’s fine, but the changes already made have caused damage, so we’re fixing the damage done,” Johnson said.
Johnson said the damage is twofold: People who rely on e-mail for essential items such as medicines could suffer from postal delays, and electorally, confidence in the security of voting by mail has been undermined.
“If you reduce the hours and capacity for overtime for postal workers leading in a full volume season before the elections [and] the end result will be email that is not delivered on time, you are trying to undermine our election, “Johnson said.
Johnson added that voters of color and poor voters, who are less likely to run in elections, are more likely to be disenfranchised by actions that undermine confidence in voting methods.
In a recent poll of Latino and Black voters for Voter Participation Center and the Center for Voter Information, both groups were found to have distrust in mail-in voting systems.
Half of the Latino voters surveyed said they intended to vote by mail, and half of Black voters said they would prefer it.
Johnson said that although progress has been made in the participation of minorities since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the last decade has seen “an acceleration to undermine democracy and suppress the vote.”
“If we truly respect and respect this democracy, we would stop the voting process – the administration of votes – as a polarized and racialized system. We need to open access to voting, voters would not have to choose between their health and their voting rights and administration of votes should not be tempered by a desired outcome, “Johnson said.
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