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A judge has blocked controversial changes to the United States Postal Service that have slowed down mail across the country, calling them “a politically motivated attack on the efficiency of the postal service” ahead of the November elections.
Judge Stanley Bastian in Yakima, Washington, said he was issuing a nationwide preliminary injunction requested by 14 states suing the Trump administration and the U.S. Postal Service.
States challenged the Postal Service’s “leave behind” policy, where trucks have been leaving postal facilities on time regardless of whether there is more mail to load. They also sought to force the Postal Service to treat election mail as first class mail.
The judge noted after a hearing that US President Donald Trump had repeatedly attacked vote-by-mail by making unsubstantiated claims that it is riddled with fraud. Many more voters are expected to vote by mail this November due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and states have expressed concern that the delays could result in voters not receiving ballots or registration forms on time.
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“The states have shown that the defendants are involved in a politically motivated attack on the efficiency of the Postal Service,” Bastian said.
He also said the changes created “a substantial possibility that many voters will be disenfranchised.”
Bastian, appointed by former President Barack Obama, issued a written order later on Thursday (local time) that closely followed the relief requested by the states.
Directed the Postal Service to stop implementing the “leave behind” policy, to treat all election mail as first class mail rather than slower moving categories, to reinstall necessary mail processing machines to ensure timely handling of the electoral mail and that they inform their employees about the requirements of their precautionary measure.
Postal Service spokesman Dave Partenheimer said the organization is reviewing its legal options, but “there should be no question that the Postal Service is ready and committed to handle any volume of election mail it receives.”
Al Drago / Bloomberg
Trump arrives for a press conference at the White House in Washington, DC.
Lee Moak, a member of the Postal Service’s board of governors, called the idea that any change was politically motivated “totally and utterly without merit.”
Following a national uproar, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major donor to the President of the United States, Donald Trump, and the Republican Party, announced that he would suspend some changes, including the removal of iconic blue mailboxes in many cities and the dismantling of mail processing machines.
But other changes remained in place, and states, including the battlefields of Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada, asked the court to block them.
Led by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, the states said the Postal Service made the changes without first taking them to the Postal Regulatory Commission for public comment and an advisory opinion, as required by federal law. They also said the changes interfered with their constitutional authority to administer their elections.
At the hearing, Justice Department attorney Joseph Borson tried to assure the judge that the Postal Service would handle ballot mail promptly, noting that an increase in ballots in the mail would pale in comparison to increases in, say, holiday cards.
Nati Harnik / AP
One person leaves mail-in ballot applications in a mailbox in Nebraska.
He also said that the slowdown caused by the “leave behind” policy had improved since it was first implemented, and that the Postal Service had not actually made any changes to how it classifies and processes election mail. DeJoy has repeatedly insisted that processing ballot mail remains the organization’s top priority.
“There has been a lot of confusion in the briefing and in the press about what the Postal Service has done,” Borson said. “The states accuse us of making changes that we have not actually made.”
Voters who are concerned about their ballot counting “can just drop off their ballots in the mail quickly,” he said, and states can help by submitting the registration form or absentee ballots in advance.
Borson also insisted that the states were obliged to present their challenge not in court, but before the Postal Regulatory Commission itself, despite the fact that by law the commission has 90 days to respond. Bastian rejected that idea, saying there was no time for that with the elections only seven weeks away.
The states admitted that mail delays have eased since service cuts first created a national uproar in July, but said on-time deliveries remain well below their previous levels, meaning millions of pieces of mail that would otherwise arrive on time are no longer. .
Nati Harnik / AP
Many American voters are expected to vote by mail this November due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
They also pointed out some of the effects the changes had already had: Michigan spent $ 2 million (NZ $ 3 million) earlier this year on envelopes that met ballot mail standards, only to find that the Postal Service did not. would treat as first class mail. .
In Madison, Wisconsin, the number of ballots that were not counted because they were late for the August primaries doubled from the August 2018 primaries.
Additionally, they cited an investigation by information technology consultant Mynor Urizar-Hunter, who helped start a website that tracks Postal Service changes, noting that 78 percent of machines scheduled for removal were in won counties. by Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The plaintiff states are Washington, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia, all run by Democratic attorneys general.
Pennsylvania is leading a separate multi-state lawsuit over the changes, and New York and Montana have filed their own challenges.
