US postal chaos asks Democrats to reconsider e-mail voting plan

(Reuters) – US Postal Service (USPS) wins prompt some Democrats and local election officials to reconsider their vote-by-post strategy for the November presidential election, changing the emphasis on leaving boxes and early votes cast by the post office omlizze.

The 2020 prize question promises to be the nation’s biggest test of postal voting. But the persistent, unpredictable attacks by US President Donald Trump, on balloting, along with cost cuts that delayed postal service nationwide, have sown concern and confusion among many voters.

Democrat officials who just weeks ago announced their dominance in compiling emails during a recent primary are now warning supporters of Presidential challenger Joe Biden to be cautious. Operators in battlefield states, including Pennsylvania, are particularly concerned about polls arriving too late to count by Nov. 3.

“We are considering telling voters that if they did not send their full ballot by October 15, you will not be in a hurry. Vote instead in person or cast your vote at an election office, said Joe Foster, chairman of the Democratic Party in Montgomery County, the most populous of Philadelphia’s suburban areas. “We want to make sure every vote counts.”

Other local Democratic leaders, from states like Florida and North Carolina, told Reuters they were also considering urging voters to email or otherwise vote in person weeks before the election.

On Tuesday, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced that he was suspending cost-cutting measures he had put in place in recent weeks, which had led to widespread service disruptions. Those changes included limits on the overtime of workers, orders for trucks to go on schedule, even if there was mail still to be loaded, and the removal of some mail sorting machines.

“The Postal Service is ready today to handle all the volume of election mail it receives this fall,” DeJoy said in a statement. He also promised to deploy ‘standby resources’ with effect from 1 October to meet unexpected demand.

But some Democrats said the damage has already been done. Many trust DeJoy – who was a major donor of the Trump campaign before he became postal chief – to restore service to the independent government agency amid a presidential race that poll said Biden is leading.

“Return the mailboxes you deleted,” said Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island on Twitter. “Back to the sorting machines you brought. Restore the regular hours of post offices you have short. Return mailboxes you have taken. The list goes on. ”

A USPS spokesman declined to comment. DeJoy is expected to provide more detail about his plans in testimony before the House on Friday and the House on Monday.

White House staffer Mark Meadows said Tuesday that Trump never told the Postal Service to change its operations.

Democrats demanded $ 25 billion to shake the balance of the USPS in a massive virus relief package that passed the House of Representatives in May. Republicans have succumbed to that figure, and Trump said last week that he opposed that funding because it could be used to encourage postal voting. But administration officials have said in recent days that they are open to additional funding as public outrage over the USPS drama has grown.

Local Democratic officials, workers and campaigners said they were not waiting for a Washington solution.

In the rival state of Michigan, Democratic voter turnout volunteer Karen McJimpson, 64, is urging voters to encourage them to deliver their absentee ballots directly to designated dropboxes as election agencies in light of postal concerns. She said Tuesday’s news about restored service did not give her any comfort. “I do not trust it,” said McJimpson, who volunteered with a nonprofit called Michigan United. “There has been too much noise around, and someone is clearly pulling the strings. We will proceed as planned: drop the ballot boxes. ”

Upheaval at the USPS has also pushed back some Democrats’ plans for other types of election post.

Brad Crone, a Democratic strategist in North Carolina, plans to send up to two million mailers between now and election day to support various state and congressional candidates. The campaign flyers will be emailed directly to his printer, who sent him a message last week: If Crone wants to send everything over October 19, he must sign an exemption acknowledging that it may not be there before election day.

Crone said he will now stop his shipping on October 4, three weeks earlier than he had originally planned.

“It’s alarming,” Crone said. “Americans are witnessing major system disruptions, be it the postal system, COVID testing or their local schools. The average voter sees this and is just deepened. ”

DROP BOX BATTLE

Postage has been growing steadily since the turn of the century. In the 2016 presidential election, post-ballots accounted for 23.6% of all sold-out ballots, up from 19.2% in 2008, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

Interest has exploded this year as voters have tried to avoid polling stations due to the coronavirus pandemic. Mail votes this year accounted for 80% of all votes cast in 16 state legislatures, including Wisconsin, Nevada and Pennsylvania, according to an estimate by Charles Stewart III, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Some states, such as New York, have difficulty handling the crutch.

The uproar has caused many lawsuits. Republicans in Texas, for example, rejected a recent Democratic effort to make it easier for their citizens to vote by post in the pandemic. The vast majority of Texans will be required to vote in person in November.

Democrats have overcome somewhere else. In South Carolina, officials have agreed to provide prepaid postage for absentee ballots, making a barrier easier for those who would otherwise have to deliver their own stamps. In Minnesota, the state voted to suspend a requirement that absentee voters get a witness to sign their ballots and count votes that are postmarked by election day.

The Democratic Party currently has ongoing lawsuits over postal voting in 14 states, according to Marc Elias, the lawyer who oversees the effort.

Trump has in recent weeks passed unsupported indications that postal voting is vulnerable to tampering and would result in Democrats running the election. He sought to differentiate between states that only provide e-mail ballots to voters who run for office – including Florida, where Trump himself abstaines – and those who move their elections entirely by mail. to perform, which he claims can lead to widespread cheat.

Election experts say postal voting is as safe as any other method.

The Trump attacks have forced state and local Republicans to do some damage control. Many of their most trusted supporters, especially older voters, have long used balloting. Some Republicans fear that the breadth of the presidency will depress the turnout.

A Wall Street Journal / NBC poll released Monday found that nearly half of Biden supporters in November plan to vote by mail, while just 11% of Trump supporters plan to do so .

The latest frontrunner in the ballot box is the assigned ballot box, a closed, sturdy-built bureau that has been a popular option for voters who would rather have postal votes but do not want to return through the USPS. Chamber officials collect those ballot papers and take them to voting bureaucracies.

Electoral officials in South Carolina, Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania and elsewhere are seeking to expand or reduce location bans, such as requiring voters to provide identification in order to use them.

Those changes have met with opposition from Republicans over concerns about fraud. On Monday, Trump turned his fire on dropboxes.

Some states use ‘dropboxes’ for the Universal Mail-In Ballots collection. So who will ‘collect’ the ballots, and what can be done about them before they tabulate? he wrote on Twitter. “A regular election? So bad for our Country. ”

Rob Daniel, chairman of the Charleston County Democratic Party in South Carolina, said there is only one constituency in the county of about 400,000 people. He said some voters would have to drive 45 minutes to reach it because of the odd shape of the province.

Daniel said the provincial election government is seeking permission from the state to add more boxes, but that is not certain. As a backup, the party urges voters to request their emails early and return them as soon as possible via the USPS.

“Even Trump can’t shake the Postal Service so much that he can’t deliver mail in the city in 30 days,” Daniel said.

Democrats still see a bigger concern: Trump has already raised the possibility that he may not accept the results of an election, the outcome of which could take days to decide because of the number of posts to be counted.

“That’s absolutely our biggest threat,” said Michigan Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist.