The U.S. Postal Service warned in July 46 states and Washington, DC that tens of millions of voters could be effectively fired because their post-in ballots might not be processed quickly enough for the November elections – even if voters follow all the election rules of their state.
The Post Office’s announcement, first reported by the Washington Post on Friday, is the latest warning that sweeping austerity measures and organizational revisions at the bureau, combined with increased demand for absenteeism during the pandemic, undermines the capacity of the United States to conduct a fair election. Some states were able to get 10 times their normal amount of absentee ballots in the November election.
The letter was sent before a round of austerity measures that slow down nationwide delivery of mail and could make delays in sending and receiving votes even worse.
“What Trump is doing to the USPS – right before our eyes – is a serious threat to our democracy than anything a president has ever done,” he said. tweeted Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas, on the news. ‘I don’t react too much; this is a fire with alarm. ”
Thomas J. Marshall, general counsel and executive vice president of the Postal Service, issued the notices at the end of July, according to records obtained by the Post.
The agency told six states and DC that a narrow set of their voters could experience delayed voting. But for the remaining 40 states, the warning is far too serious: They were told that “long-standing deadlines for requesting, returning or counting votes were ‘incongruous’ with e-mail service and that voters who send ballot papers near these deadlines can be disenfranchised, ”reports the Post.
That increased warning applies to 186 million potential voters which are spread across blue states, red states, and battlefield states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
After the notices were issued, a few states moved deadlines to require voters or rather to ask for votes to allow enough time for counting. But it is too late for many states to meet deadlines, according to the Post.
The Post Office’s letters advise 31 to inform voters that their postal ballots must be sent at least one week before election day to ensure that they are counted.
Experts on voting behavior have said that for the pandemic an estimated 25 per cent of voters would be expected to throw their ballots by post, but they now estimate that 60 per cent or more will try to vote by post because the pandemic is discouraged in- person vote.
New York City saw a 17-fold increase in mail-in-votes during its primary in June, a spike that overwhelmed the mail system and left the results for a congressional match for more than a month unclear.
The Postal Service is under siege
Trump opposes $ 25 billion in emergency funding for the Postal Service in the Coronavirus bill passed by House Democrats in May; he also rejected the Democrats’ proposal to provide $ 3.6 billion in subsidies to states for contingency plans for the election, which would fund additional equipment, supplies and personnel needed to help with voting security during the pandemic.
The warnings for the postal services to states were planned before Trump appointed Louis DeJoy head of the bureau in May. But reportedly DeJoy has overseen a range of cost-cutting measures that experts say will exacerbate their delivery problems.
The Postal Service, for example, is unlocking 671 mail sorters (10 percent of the inventory), a move that the American Postal Workers Union said has slowed down the processing of polling stations. Those machines can sort more than 20 million pieces of paper mail per hour.
DeJoy has also reassigned 23 postal workers, consolidating power within the agency.
Recent reports that DeJoy still has a multimillion-dollar stake in his former company, XPO Logistics, a postal service contractor, have sparked even more controversy over the Postal Service’s cost cuts, shocking ethics experts.
“The idea that you can be a postmaster general and keep tens of millions in advance in a postal service contractor is pretty shocking,” Walter Shaub, the former director of the Office of Government Ethics, told CNN about the revelation this week. ‘It could be that he intends to sell it, but I do not understand the delay. He has managed to divide many other things. And if he was not willing to sell that, he would not have taken the job. ”
CNN reported on Saturday that the internal watchdog at the Postal Service is monitoring its compliance with federal ethical rules and some of DeJoy’s new policies, such as its decision to reduce overtime for postal workers and delay some mail delivery.
And a bilingual group of state secretaries – officials responsible for conducting state-level elections – said DeJoy did not respond to a request to meet this week to seek clarity on the implications of cuts to postal services.
The Postal Service has faced financial challenges for years, and as Recode’s Adam Clark Estes explained, the pandemic has taken a huge extra hit on the agency’s finances:
In early March, the volume of first-class mail began to plummet (although an increase in parcel delivery helped to make up for that lost revenue). Meanwhile, tens of thousands of postal workers became ill as they began to quarantine, leading to a labor shortage and the need for more overtime hours. The Postal Service also spent hundreds of millions of dollars on personal protective equipment (PPE) and on retrofitting post offices with more plexiglass and more space for social distance.
Top Democrats and legal experts have sounded alarms about postal service warnings to states about their inability to handle post-in votes, and the refusal by the Trump administration and Republicans to bring in additional funds in the Post Office on election day arrives.
Joyce Alene, a professor at the University of Alabama, referring to the post office’s quandary as a “produced crisis,” which it describes as “unabashed voter repression” by the Trump administration.
“Sabotage of postal services = suppression of votes. You don’t have to connect the dots, ” tweeted Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT). “This bare-knuckle scheme openly mocks our democracy and all Americans.”
Experts have also pointed out that election crises can arise even if post-in-votes are not below too much, but are simply severely delayed.
Lawrence Douglas, a law professor at Amherst College, has claimed that Trump has signaled that he could use delays in mail-in-voting by considering them fraudulent and without claiming that their likely democratic skew is evidence of foul play.
